Our Projects

Introduction

This year’s theme is “Leadership“, to underscore the critical need for strong female role models in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) careers. The objective of Girls in ICT Day is to bridge the barriers girls face in STEM education and to reinforce gender equalities by providing digital skills and tools to girls.

Over the years, MDPA in collaboration with our parent Ministry, has marked this day through:

• Presentations in State Secondary Schools and Career Talk during Infotech
• Interviews in 2019 of 8 Women IT Role Models, posted on social media
• Organisation of 4 Boot Camps in 2022, where some 150 girls from 36 secondary schools of the 4 Educational Zones participated were introduced to block coding for programmable devices

• Video Competition in 2023 for secondary girl students on IT themes

Year 2024 Girls in ICT event was marked by the following events:

• Organisation of 4 Boot Camps, one for each Educational Zone on 3D Design and Printing Technology
• Career Counseling sessions to secondary girls’ students around the island

Career Counseling

The Career Counselling sessions focused on encouraging Girls to embrace studies and careers in IT. In Mauritius, due to lack of institutional resources, career guidance counseling for youngsters touch very few students and covers all fields and not specifically IT.

Career Counselling Video

Objectives

The objectives of the programme are to address the following:

• a lack of guidance and counseling to encourage girls to take IT studies
• widening gap in uptake of IT subjects by girls
• perception that IT is a man’s domain – physical set up of network, servers, equipment
• wrong perception that IT equates to Call Centres and night shifts
• peer pressure from friends and parents who are convinced that professionals in fields such as finance or accounting or law are better remunerated than their IT counterparts

The programme were held in 10 State Secondary Schools (Girls) in concert with the Ministry of Education, and the Industry Associations (OTAM, MITIA and CCIFM). The talks, of duration of 1 hour with around 100 participants for each SSS, were delivered by representatives of companies nominated by industry associations.

The Calendar for the career talks was as follows: