Impact Stories from Education Diplomacy/Mentoring Policy Area
Fellow delivers keynote speech at African youth summit
Fellow(s): Sabina Nforba
Country: Cameroon
Cohort: 2020-2021
Policy Area(s): Economic Impact, Education Diplomacy/Mentoring, Professional Development, Youth Engagement
Fellow Sabina Nforba (Cameroon, 2020-2021) delivered the keynote address at the opening ceremony of “Democracy and Political Transitions in Africa: Harnessing Youth Voices for Change,” a two-day youth summit held in Accra, Ghana this summer. Acting as a representative of the Office of the Youth Envoy of the African Union Commission, Sabina addressed an audience of participants aged 15-35 from among the Economic Community of West African States’ (ECOWAS) 15 member nations on the importance of youths taking ownership over the democratic and developmental goals of the continent.
Sabina encouraged attendees to get involved in the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals and the African Union Agenda 2063, which works to strengthen Africa’s position on the global stage by driving inclusive socio-economic development, comprehensive integration, peace and security and democratic governance. “The youth should actively and meaningfully participate in politics, become entrepreneurs, and fully exploit the African Continental Free Trade Area agreement,” Sabina urged, adding that they should “champion good governance, starting from local communities to regional communities and the continent at large.”
The Youth Summit is a collaboration of ECOWAS, the West Africa Network for Peacebuilding (WANEP) and the African Governance Architecture (AGA).
Report Date...: 8/8/2022
Fellow gives lecture on earning a master’s degree abroad
Fellow(s): Yasmin Redjil
Country: Algeria
Cohort: 2022
Policy Area(s): Education Diplomacy/Mentoring, Professional Development
Fellow Yasmin Redjil (2022), an engineer at the Ministry of Public Works and Transit in Algeria, was recently invited to give a guest lecture at the Al-lyha Islamic University of Kuningan, Indonesia entitled “All About the Master’s Degree: The Life, The Thesis, the Future.” Yasmin’s talk focused on preparing undergraduates for earning a master’s degree abroad, establishing a defense-ready thesis and developing a bright vision for the future. She discussed her own experiences undertaking graduate study in Beijing, China, provided motivation on assuming ownership of one’s academic field and shared her experiences as a TechWomen emerging leader in Silicon Valley. “I wanted to [help them] achieve their dreams by eliminating the word ‘impossible’,” she says, “and show them that they are amazing people who deserve the best!”
Report Date...: 8/8/2022
Fellows conduct college-prep training for girls’ scholarship academy
Fellow(s): Laura Tich, Sylvia Nyaga
Country: Kenya
Cohort: 2022
Policy Area(s): Education Diplomacy/Mentoring, Empowering Women and Girls
Kenyan fellows Laura Tich and Sylvia Nyaga (2022) conducted a day-of college preparatory mentorship at Daraja Academy, a boarding school that provides needs-based scholarships for exceptional girls who face limited continuing education opportunities.
During their visit, Laura and Sylvia provided mentorship and guidance while teaching several classes to the 2022 Transition Class, who will soon embark on their first year of college.
Laura and Sylvia were introduced to the school through their TechWomen Impact Coach, Samantha Raniere, who also recently visited Daraja Academy to facilitate a CliftonStrengths workshop. Samantha expressed that she was “beyond appreciative for these powerhouse women to spend time with these young women and further empower them to become the leaders they were meant to be.”
Report Date...: 8/1/2022
South African Fellows co-host Aviation and Space camp for girls
Fellow(s): Darshni Appalsamy
Country: South Africa
Cohort: 2022
Policy Area(s): Education Diplomacy/Mentoring, Empowering Women and Girls, Professional Growth, Youth Engagement
South African fellow Refilwe Ledwaba (2019) recently hosted her Girls Fly Programme Africa (GFPA) aviation and space technology camp in Western Cape, South Africa with volunteer support from fellows Darshni Appalsamy (2022) and Nobukhosi Dlamini (2019). The GFPA provides an immersive STEAM development program focused on aviation, space technology, mentorship and career-building skills for a cohort of 40 high school girls. The experience included hands-on practice with 3D software, a visit to a South African National Space Agency, face-to-face interactions with industry professionals. Darshni led a Design Thinking workshop, sharing that she was so happy “to help these smart, ambitious, talented young ladies realize that their dreams, too, are not too big or out of reach. That not even the sky is the limit!”
Read More »Report Date...: 7/25/2022
Mentor & fellow team up to deliver computing workshop
Fellow(s): “Kathy Giori, Faten Khalfallah”
Country: Tunisia, United States
Cohort: 2015
Policy Area(s): Education Diplomacy/Mentoring, Empowering Women and Girls, Professional Growth, Youth Engagement
Mentor Kathy Giori, with the support of fellow Faten Khalfallah (Tunisia, 2015), facilitated a workshop introducing young women to the world of physical computing with Microblocks, a programming language that runs on microcontrollers. Kathy has extensive experience leading workshops for Microblocks, where she directs global partnerships and outreach and serves as a member of the Project Leadership Committee. The interactive event was a part of Get Science, Engineering, and Technology (GetSET) 2022, an outreach program hosted by the Santa Clara Valley chapter of the Society of Women Engineers (SCV SWE) that empowers and motivates young women from underrepresented groups to pursue careers in STEM.
Faten assisted the event while on a visit to the U.S. during which she served as an event partner for the Robotics Education & Competition (REC) Foundation Summit in Dallas, Texas and an attendee of the Google-sponsored Girl Powered VEX Robotics Workshop in Sunnyvale, CA. She joined these events as a representative of Tunisia and the First Skills Club, a non-profit she co-founded with her husband Rabah Hammouda to provide educational programming for kids to learn and communicate in English via STEM education.
Report Date...: 7/25/2022
Mentors launch series of free data privacy trainings
Fellow(s): “Jessica Dickson Goodman, Tanya Kobyluk, and Fatema Kothari”
Country:
Policy Area(s): Education Diplomacy/Mentoring, Empowering Women and Girls
TechWomen mentor Jessica Dickinson Goodman, Board President of the Internet Society’s San Francisco Bay Area Chapter (SF Bay ISOC), has launched a free virtual series of encryption and data protection trainings with the support of co-host and mentor Tanya Kobyluk, ISOC Board Vice-President, and mentor Fatema Kothari, ISOC board member.
Running every third Monday of the month, the trainings focus on providing tactical tech support and training about encryption tools, technologies and good habits to protect personal data and private searches online.
The sessions were started as a response to an overall interest in people seeking better control of their online privacy as a result of recent rollbacks on reproductive protections in the USA. They are open to the public and have been attended by guests worldwide, including TechWomen alumnae from Egypt and Cameroon.
Report Date...: 7/18/2022
Cameroonian Fellows tapped for One Young World conference
Fellow(s): “Christabel Ngwashi Apholung, Zyh Akumawah”
Country: Cameroon
Cohort: 2020-2021, 2022
Policy Area(s): Education Diplomacy/Mentoring, Professional Growth, Youth Engagement
Cameroonian fellows Christabel Ngwashi Apholung (2020-2021) and Zyh Akumawah (2022) have been selected to attend the annual One Young World Summit in the UK as scholars of AstraZeneca’s Young Health Programme (YHP). YHP seeks to prevent the most common non-communicable diseases (NCDs) such as cancer, diabetes and heart disease by confronting the primary risk factors – tobacco use, alcohol overconsumption, physical inactivity, unhealthy diet and air pollution.
Christabel is a medical doctor and the founder of MoreThanJustAnMD Health, a storytelling platform that utilizes social media, radio and television to promote proactive health care. She is also steering the Fight Against Substance Abuse Project (FASAP) to educate young adult students about healthy lifestyles and reduce substance abuse.
Zyh, also a medical doctor, is the founder and medical director of EasyHealth, an organization that combines accessible digital technologies with community cooperation to improve the quality of health among rural Cameroonians. Zyh also contributes her time to St Mary Soledad Catholic Hospital and Doctors Without Borders as a medical and mental health resource. She believes that “an amplified voice is key to achieving the policy changes that are needed to help establish more focus on non-communicable diseases among young persons.”
Christabel and Zyh will convene with more than 1,000 young changemakers worldwide to present and network among One Young World Counselors. Past counselors have included Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu, Sir Bob Geldof, Kofi Annan, Emma Watson, Professor Muhammad Yunus and Arianna Huffington.
Report Date...: 7/11/2022
Mentor leads POWER sessions with U.S. State Department
Fellow(s): Lucie Newcomb
Country:
Policy Area(s): Economic Impact, Education Diplomacy/Mentoring, Empowering Women and Girls, Professional Growth
Long-time TechWomen mentor Lucie Newcomb, CEO of NewComm Global Group, collaborated with diplomatic partners to host a series of webinars for Providing Opportunities for Women’s Economic Rise (POWER), an initiative of the U.S. State Department’s Bureau of Economic and Business Affairs.
Topics of the webinar series focused on value proposition and product market fit, business planning, funding sources and pitching. Lucie co-designed and co-facilitated these sessions with stakeholders from the U.S. Embassies in Tokyo and Seoul.
POWER was launched in 2019 to leverage diplomatic relationships and resources to promote women’s economic empowerment worldwide. It connects the U.S. private sector with U.S. missions abroad to encourage opportunities, partnership and strategy among women-led enterprises in emerging markets.
Lucie has worked as a Speaker Program Trainer and Curriculum Developer for the U.S. State Department for more than 8 years. She actively attended last month’s SelectUSA Summit hosted by the U.S. Department of Commerce and has recently been named one of the 150 Great Leaders of 2022 by the Global Council for the Promotion of International Trade.
Report Date...: 7/11/2022
Fellow appointed Vice-Chancellor of STEM university in Nigeria
Fellow(s): Francisca Oladipo
Country: Nigeria
Cohort: 2019
Policy Area(s): Education Diplomacy/Mentoring, Professional Growth
In early July, it was announced that fellow Francisca Oladipo (2016) had been confirmed as the newly appointed Vice-Chancellor and Chief Executive Officer of Thomas Adewumi University (TAU) in Oko Irese of Kwara State, Nigeria. Francisca has over 20 years of academic leadership and research experience, most recently as Director of Quality Assurance and Head of the Computer Science Department at Federal University Lokoja (FUL), where she also worked as a coordinator of the FUL-RWEYDF Centre for ICT (Information and Computer Technology) for Development and Training, a collaborative effort between FUL and the Rural Women Empowerment and Youth Development Foundation. In addition to these roles, Francisca also serves as Executive Coordinator of VODAN Africa, a collaboration of universities and health facilities across the continent of Africa that provides a “platform to enable access to critical data needed from Africa to fight the novel COVID-19.”
Francisca shares that she “warmly welcome[s] this opportunity to co-create with all the [sic] critical stakeholders to realize the vision of the founders of Thomas Adewumi University through the delivery of accessible, student-centered education in Science, Technology and Medicine.”
Thomas Adewumi University is an accredited, STEM-based institution of higher education with the mission of providing a “world-class academic environment that supports staff and students in conducting cutting-edge teaching and research in the areas of Science, Technology and Medicine …[for] the benefit of humanity.”
Francisca earned a PhD in Computer Science from Nnamdi Azikiwe University and has completed continuing education courses at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, University of Oxford and University of Essex. She completed her experience as a TechWomen emerging leader with a mentor from Google in 2016.
Report Date...: 7/4/2022
Fellow subject of short film on pioneering satellite build
Fellow(s): Kyzzhibek Batyrkanova
Country: Kyrgyzstan
Cohort: 2019
Policy Area(s): Economic Impact, Education Diplomacy/Mentoring, Empowering Women and Girls, Entrepreneurship, Professional Growth
Kyrgyz fellow Kyzzhibek Batyrkanova (2019) recently starred as the lead subject of a 7-minute documentary on the Kyrgyz Space Program produced by the Eastern Standard Times (EST). Kyzzhibek is the 27-year-old director of the Kyrgyz Space Program and leads an all-girls team on a mission to build and launch their country’s first ever satellite. The Kyrgyz Space Program was founded in 2018 to advance science, education and gender equality in the country and Central Asian region. With no national space infrastructure to lean on, Kyzzhibek and her team have started from scratch, first building a lightweight 10cm x 10cm x 10cm educational model of a CubeSat, a miniature satellite which can collect and analyze simple data from space before moving on to draft and flight models. In the short film, Kyzzhibek explains, “Our project [is] not only aiming to launch the satellite, but also to educate girls and women. More than 100 women [have] graduated our course and they [have] started [sic] how to solder, how to create 3d models, how to code, and [how to] work with Arduino microcontrollers and their sensors.” She continues, “after completing our courses, some of the girls wanted to study programming and become software developers and some [went on] to universities with technical majors.”
Despite the simplicity of the satellite model, the project has already lasted four years and is estimated to cost more than 100,000 USD. The Kyrgyz Space Program raises funds in part through a Patreon page. There, they honor important women from international space history with various donation brackets named after the famous figures, including Shiaki Mukai, the first female Asian astronaut, Anousheh Ansari, the first Muslim female astronaut and Anna Lee Fisher, the first mother to journey to space. The history-making satellite has been named after Burulai Turdaaly Kyzy, a 20-year-old Kyrgyz medical student who was murdered by her abductor in a police station while trying to report her own bride kidnapping.
“We really want girls in our country, our region and globally to understand that they are capable of doing anything,” Kyzzhibek declares. “The world is such a big place, and the universe is enormous. No matter what other people tell you, always believe in yourself.”
Report Date...: 7/4/2022