Foundation seeks to narrow digital divide via mentoring

To narrow the digital divide in science and technology participation by girls, a non-governmental organisation (NGO), Christopher Kolade Foundation, recently trained 400 girls in Lagos.

Speaking on the initiative, Founder, SHE Science and Technology Fair, Beatrice Kolade, said: ‘‘the gumption is based on the girl- child foundation. When you train the woman, you have trained the world. We believe that when you empower the woman, you have empowered the world. There is a big gap between male and female participants in the science and technology subjects, and one of our aims is to narrow the divide, and have more females, who will participate in these subjects. That is our objective.

“Last year, we trained 60 girls and we have done 400 this year. At present, we deal with public schools in partnership with the Lagos State government who give us directive on the schools that we can train. “

Presently, we mentor only the public schools, for we opine that girls may be discriminated against in favour of their counterparts.”

Speaking on the initiative, the Chief Executive Officer, Future Software Resources Ltd., Nkemdilim Begho, said it is a great initiative that should be supported by more corporate organisations. This will help scale it to help them become market-ready, because an invention is only good when it starts impacting those utilising it.

Speaking on the girl-child education in STEM, she said: “the key thing is to expose females to technology, to STEM in a positive way so they can make their choice. I think that making them interact with science allows them to see the benefits and opportunities.

For one of the beneficiaries, Nweze Victory, who invented a light and temperature meter using an LCD to display light and temperature reading, “we used five Saturdays to achieve this innovation, despite the complexities that exist in the market.”

Speaking on the invention, she said: “we looked at the various problems in our environment like in the field of medicine, people who have measles will find this handy. If I have measles and the doctor recommends that I do not go out during certain hours, with this application, I can check the suitable time as prescribed by the doctor.”