IT Girls initiative is a joint initiative of three UN agencies (UNDP, UNICEF and UN Women), which with the support of Sweden aims to provide girls and women with access to technology and new digital skills needed in the 21st century. The main goal is to raise awareness about the importance of greater participation of women and girls in the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) sector, thus increasing their economic opportunities in the labour market.
The first IT Girls Summer School was organized in Sarajevo back in 2019 to enable girls to acquire coding and robotics skills to support the design of smart city Sarajevo projects. In order to further expand this idea, the second Summer School was organized in Banja Luka this year.
In cooperation with the Future City Initiative and the DigitalBIZ Project together with the Association for Digitization and Informatization of Cultural Heritage (DIGI.BA), IT Girls organized a ten-day Summer School in the premises of the Innovation Center Banja Luka.
Twenty girls aged 13 to 15 years were given the opportunity to discover the world of virtual reality (VR) and 3D modeling while creating a project together with VR technology experts which presented their vision of Banja Luka as a city of the future.
“IT Girls Summer School was an exceptional experience for me. Accustomed to working with university students, the energy of these girls was both a challenge and a pleasure. Their creativity restores the hope for the future. Virtual reality is definitely a new medium and now we have 20 girls equipped with this knowledge”, said Prof. Selma Rizvić, IT Girls Summer School trainer.
IT Girls initiative team continues to intensively on educating and involving young women and girls in the world of informatics through a large number of activities planned until the end of the year.
