By Albert Futukpo
Damongo, May 06, GNA – Mrs Ursula Owusu-Ekuful, Minister for Communications and Digitalisation, as part of activities for the Girls-in-ICT programme, has toured four training centres in the West Gonja Municipality of the Savannah Region.
The tour was to enable the Minister to witness and assess the ongoing training for girls on ICT skills.
The training centres toured were Cathedral Junior High School (JHS), St Anne’s JHS, and Yagbon JHS located in Damongo and Busunu JHS.
On April 25, this year, as part of the Girls-in-ICT programme, the Ministry of Communications and Digitalisation started training 1,000 girls from all the districts in the Savannah Region on ICT skills to expose them to the basics of computing and coding.
To facilitate the exercise, a total of 100 teachers had been trained as trainers to train the beneficiary girls, who were divided into two batches.
Mrs Owusu-Ekuful, briefing journalists in Damongo on Friday while touring the training centres, said “I am very impressed with the quality of instruction that
they have been given in the last four days. Some said they had never seen or touched a computer before. Now they are creating their own games. They can create their own word documents and do other things with the computer.”
She said “Tomorrow, this second batch will have an exam. The first batch has already done their exam. So, the best 100 girls will be the top performers, who will be awarded prizes of their own laptops.”
She spoke about the rationale for undertaking the programme in the region saying “We decided that we will go round all the newly created regions even though we have already been to the old Northern Region but we will go round all the newly created regions. So, we did the three Bono Regions last year. We have already done Oti, Western North, and North East. So, it is left with Savannah and the Northern Regions, and we are here in Savannah Region this week to do the Girls-in-ICT training.”
She said “The theme for this year’s celebration is: “Digital Skills for Life”, and it is being celebrated globally, and we do not just have a day’s celebration; we had two weeks of instruction for the girls; we trained teachers, we provide the top 20 schools with computer laboratories so that they can continue learning, we give the top 100 performers their own laptops so that they can continue learning and get better so that even after the programme ends, they can continue building on the introductory skills that we have given them and utilise it in their studies and beyond, which is what we mean by digital skills for life.”
Mrs Owusu-Ekuful told the beneficiary girls that the skills they were acquiring now would be relevant for them no matter where they found themselves in life adding “The reason we are focusing on girls is to narrow the gender digital divide; fewer girls utilise or have computer skills or use them than boys do. So, we want to demystify it; introduce them to it and let them know that they can also do it, and the response I have had today so far is fantastic, and I am confident that no matter where they find themselves in life, they can compete with their peers and come out very favourably.”
She said “I am looking forward to Monday when we will have the mentorship day; we will bring female ICT professionals from various fields of endevour to talk to the girls about their own experiences and encourage them and let them see that the skills they are acquiring today, they can utilise them in the world of work tomorrow so that they can also consider choosing ICT careers instead of or in addition to more traditional careers that they are exposed to.”
GNA