June 14th, 2021, (Karachi, Pakistan): CodeGirls held a digital event to mark three years of empowering girls through coding and business skills. The event was organized to reprise the purpose of the program, share the journey since its inception, and to gauge feedback from industry experts for further improvement.
The event was hosted by Hasnain Walji the co-founder of CodeGirls Program. He is also the Executive Director of United Global Initiative. The other founders of CodeGirls Shamim Rajani (COO – Genetech Solutions, Vice Chairperson – P@SHA) and Faiza Yousuf (Founder – WomenInTechPK Product Management Consultant) also spoke at the event.
Furthermore, the speaker list included the representatives of local and international organizations acknowledged as Friends of CodeGirls. Some of the prominent names include Lindsey Nefesh-Clarke founder and president of W4.org, Bilal Mahmood MD at Contour Software – a subsidiary of Constellation Software Inc. and Dr. Bushra Anjum who is Health IT Data Specialist, Tribune Top20Under40, #WomenInTech Advocate, Mentor & Speaker.
CodeGirls proudly announced that more than 700 students have graduated from its training program and there have been over 110 industry placements, all of this in a period of less than three years. Two Alumni from the program Mehak Nayani and Imama Mansoor shared their success stories and how they were able to find their standing in IT industry with the help of this program.
Another highlight of the program was the news that Dr. Bushra Anjum’s and Faiza Yousuf’s research paper focused on CodeGirls has been accepted at the 17th Int’l Conf on Frontiers in Education (July 21 USA). Paper will also be published in SPRINGER NATURE – Research Book Series. Dr. Bushra shared the important elements of her paper during the event.
Ms. Lindsey endorsed the program and said, “We are particularly impressed and grateful to work with CodeGirls, because CodeGirls aspires excellence and is impact driven. It is offering adapted high quality training programs to girls and young women from under-served backgrounds to enable them to enter the IT industry.”
It was overwhelming to witness validation of CodeGirls by industry experts at the event, Bilal Mehmood pledged to double the sponsorship amount which he and his company had contributed the previous year. Lindsey also committed to sponsor students for the program. Hosein Kamaly professor at Barnard College showed interest in hiring our program graduates for developing his website, similarly Ilyas Baig, founding partner of Arthur Lawrence also requested for resumes of program graduates for hiring in his firm.
The event concluded with an open Q&A session and a thank you note by Dr. Hasnain Walji.
About CodeGirls:
The program believes in absolute inclusion & improved gender parity. Girls and women from diverse backgrounds are given admission. The only pre-requisite is that the candidate should be able to operate a computer and know how to use the internet.
The first phase is 24 weeks long and includes frontend development training in HTML, CSS, Javascript and Python. The assessment is based on development of a project by the student. After completion of phase 1 students can enroll in phase 2 (UI/UX, WordPress, PHP, SQA, MERN Stack) which is 16 weeks long.
Alongside the technical skills the program consists of core skills workshops also. Entrepreneurial Skills, Effective Communication Skills, Financial Literacy, Solopreneurial Skills, Workplace Safety, Design Thinking, Business Communication Skills, Freelancing Skills, Internet Safety, Managing projects, and Work optimization and productivity hacks.
And the journey doesn’t stop here. CodeGirls has a massive network of friends, including organizations and individuals in ICT industry who contribute firsthand information about placement opportunities. As soon as students graduate from phase 1, they are guided to write resumes and their learning profile is shared with prospective employers.
CodeGirls is all set to start the 9th Cohort for phase 1 of its program from 21st June this year.
For details on the program, see our website here: http://codegirls.consulnet.net/
Images courtesy: CodeGirls
