A project of the EQUALS Skills Coalition
About the Project
Project Overview
The #eSkills4Girls Fund provides financial resources to local initiatives providing gender-sensitive skills training across countries in the Global South.
The fund is committed to tackling online gender inequality and to fostering digital skills for women and girls.
Project Partners
2021 Grantees
The CENTRE D'INNOVATION DE LUBUMBASHI (Democratic Republic of Congo) implements BINI TECH, a training programme in French/Swahili focused on women and girls with little or no digital background as well as those from disadvantaged communities. Participant groups: Data4Her empowers young career women; Code4Girls ignites passion for technology in girls age 14-18; I-MAMA focuses on digital skills of women entrepreneurs; I-DADA focuses on basic digital competencies for girls age 13-18.
Women in Digital (Bangladesh) focuses on women from all over the country but particularly those from rural areas with limited resource access and those who would like to work online. The initiative has a two-fold approach: 1) Classes and mentorship for women making a career change and gaining technical knowledge and expertise in the IT field. 2) Empowering women through e-businesses. via training in digital marketing, product quality checking, e-commerce entry, photography, and other basics.
The Deutsche Industrie- und Handelskammer São Paulo implements this program targeting women aged 18-55 with low family income, education from a public school and basic knowledge of English and Office who are unemployed or in a professional re-orientation. Women going Digital 2021 offers an e-learning course comprising 16 units, with 40-hours of content on a robust open source platform. Thanks to the #eSkills4Girls Fund, this virtual skills training is/can be offered free of charge.
The vision of TECHPEARL SOCIAL ENTERPRISE (Malawi) is to create a generation of female digital leaders in a country where only 8.4% of individuals use a computer. Based in the capital of Lilongwe, this initiative aims to provide a powerful hands-on program to young women who are no longer at school and who are seeking training to develop workplace related digital skills. The training will include various computer courses, mobile application development, entrepreneneurship, and a hackathon.
The initiative Pro Digital Inclusion – Girls Code 21, implemented by Together Civil Society Organization (Ethiopia) is an inclusive and participatory project. Girls and young women (age 18-24) with different (dis)abilities, age, national and cultural backgrounds will be grouped with young women who are trained in digital and entrepreneurial skills and coding. Within the planned projects at least five prototypes of web pages will be created to make life easier in times of COVID-19.
The DIGIWOMEN INITIATIVE by Promane and Promade Ltd. (Nigeria) in partnership with Retails Giant Academy and SheLearnsHere, is a grassroots initiative promoting digital skills for women in low-literacy Northern Central Nigeria. Participants are mostly rural women farmers who earn little for their wares and have limited land ownership rights. The initiative aims to empower women economically by increasing income and financial independence through digital skills.
Codehack Training for Young Girls in Kenya Covid-19 Edition 2021 implemented by Pwani Teknowgalz is a virtual program that aims to equip young women (age 17-28) from marginalized communities within six Kenyan counties with employable coding skills in website development, mobile app development, and digital marketing. Trainings include courses from design thinking to block-based coding. Among others, participants will create and prototype a mobile app.
Past Grantees (2019 - 2020)
InspireIT (Nigeria) encourages and supports girls and women studying or discovering STEM. Projects to make STEM courses exciting for young girls, and to get more girls to pursue STEM careers, include the STEM Club. It encourages girls in primary and secondary schools to acquire digital skills, basic programming skills, and strong foundations in science subjects. Through the #eSkills4Girls Fund, in 2020 the STEM Club Project was expanded to include children with autism.
AmazoOn du Web (Côte d’Ivoire) is an organization whose mission is to promote ICT among women by reducing the digital divide and empowering women and girls through ICT. The “rural woman – digital woman” project enables women from cooperatives to acquire marketing skills, bringing their businesses online and developing online e-commerce opportunities to extend their reach. Women and girls who participate in the training programme will also become trainers for their peers.
Apps and Girls in Tanzania and Uganda focusses on creating coding clubs in public secondary schools through the Empower Program. Girls aged 12 to 19 are taught coding skills to inspire them to enroll in STEM courses and support them to develop their own digital projects. The programme seeks to break various barriers that hinder girls and young women in technology by providing the alternative — a supportive path into the field of ICT and a future in tech.
Elegant IT in Bangladesh began its journey in 2017 with the purpose of empowering women and the disabled using mobile technology. By introducing the field of ICT to disadvantaged groups, Elegant IT aims to reduce the gender gap as well as to improve socio-economic participation of everyone.
The Global Active Learning Group in Peru aims to make life-long learning engaging and productive with a positive social impact. One of the ways they have achieved this during the last couple of years has been training students and public workers in digital mapping and associated tools. This allows them to develop more skills which allows better results in social projects.
Douar Tech’s mission is to promote the resilience of vulnerable young Moroccans, especially women and those living in rural and peri-urban areas, through training in entrepreneurship, web development and other tech related skills. The approach uses blended learning models and engages surrounding entrepreneurial and tech ecosystems through programs and professional networking initiatives. Programs currently focus on Moroccan youth, but networks span the South West Asia and North Africa region.
Data Girl Technologies (Cameroon) is an IT startup that empowers girls with digital skills. The initiative “IT 4 ALL” aims to close the digital gender gap and empower women and girls to use technology to create innovative solutions for equality in their communities. The initiative focuses on Internally Displaced girls, teenage mothers, women and girls who cannot afford formal school as well as women transitioning into tech careers. DGT also helps girls to become key actors in the IT industry.
Girl Grandeur Zimbabwe is a social club for women and girls teaching them how to take control of their own narrative through digital storytelling. By teaching them how to blog, they are given the power to finally tell the untold story of the African woman. Simultaneously, it is an income generating skill and it diversifies the voices available in the media.
Caribbean Girls Hack is a regional hackathon initiative for girls 14-18 years old and young women in college/university. Hundreds of women and girls are immersed in online training and workshops to create tech solutions for the Caribbean context. Student hackers learn robotics and drone technology and use tech to build innovative websites, mobile apps, chatbots, gaming, short films and videos. They also create podcasts to address SDG issues such as climate change and gender-based violence.
AHK Argentina carries out “Desafío 4.0 (Challenge 4.0), a three-month innovative training and mentoring program. It aims, among other things, to develop the analytical, digital and leadership skills of young people between 18 and 23 years. This strengthens the employability of Argentine youth, especially girls, in the digital economy.
How You Can Get Involved
Please get in touch with us (see below for contact information) to learn how you can be a part of this effort to break down the digital skills barrier to internet access and ensure more women and girls have the opportunity to access and use the internet.
Contact the Project:
For more information about the #eSkills4Girls Fund, please contact:
Lukas Hilgers
Policy Advisor, GIZ
lukas.hilgers [at] giz.de
Role of Cape Town Science Center
The Cape Town Science Centre (CTSC) will serve as the fund coordinator. The overall management of the fund, including the setting up of the criteria, the evaluation of the proposals, the subgranting processes and the evaluation will be under the responsibility of CTSC. Any additional funds from external partners would be contributed directly to CTSC as the fund manager. To learn more, please visit: www.cctsc.org.za )
Role of Germany
Since Germany’s G20 presidency 2017, the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) works on the initiative #eSkills4Girls to overcome the gender digital divide and to promote the participation of women and girls in the digital economy. As former Co-Leader of the EQUALS Skills Coalition, Germany is working very closely with the EQUALS partners to address and narrow the gender digital divide. Germany will finance the EQUALS Digital Skills Fund for the third year. To learn more, see: www.bmz.de/giz-en
Role of EQUALS
EQUALS is a ground-breaking global partnership of corporations, governments, communities, non-profit organizations, and academic institutions around the world working together to bridge the digital gender divide – by bringing women to tech, and tech to women – and in so doing, bettering the lives of millions worldwide. EQUALS helps partners network so they can combine efforts for greater efficiency in their work against that goal.