International Women’s Day: Girls Innovate for Change

What better way to celebrate International Women’s Day than by inspiring and empowering young girls from all over Kosovo!

Today we have gathered 40 young ambitious girls coming from Gjakova/Đakovica , Vushtrri/Vučitrn, Viti/Vitinje, Kamenica, Kaqanik/Kačanik, Ferizaj/Uroševac, Shtërpcë/Štrpce, and Brod in Prishtina to take part in our “Girl Innovate for Change” event.

The activity started with the opening speeches from Ms. Edi Gusia, Chief Executive of the Agency for Gender Equality, stated that: “Science is the strongest tool to fight inequality”. Followed by Mr. Besim Beqaj from Ministry of Innovation and Entrepreneurship , stated the importance of having a gender-balanced cabinet and how it enhances the efficiency of the Ministry. Ms. Ulrika Richardson UN Development Coordinator said: “Women’s day is being celebrated for 100 years now, however, we still continue to fight for better equality… The main principles of the UN when drafting the Sustainable Development Goals, are to Innovate and to reach gender equality. The speeches were closed by Ms. Abetare Gojani, director of IPKO Foundation said that to reach our country’s full potential it is imperative that we help women become independent, and to get them to participate in every working sector of Kosovo.

The second part of the day featured 2 workshops. Through practical learning by doing, these young participants were able to gather knowledge from different fields of technology, learning the basics of each field and will also be given sources of information to further develop and grow their skills. The first workshop organized by BONEVET, taught the girls how to combine 20 different parts into a functioning robot m+Bot which can understand and execute commands. In addition, they had a chance to work with Arduino technology and understand to program certain actions. The second workshop by Academy jCoders taught them how to program a game by using “Scratch”, through which they created different types of virtual labyrinths.