African Ada Awards and Africa Code Week

africa cw girlThe first-ever Africa Code Week, taking place across Africa on 1-10 October 2015, was launched last week with a CodeWeek Celebrity Challenge in Johannesburg.  The inaugural edition of Africa Code Week will span eleven countries and aims to reach 20,000 kids.  And we would like half of those reached to be girls!  To that end, the Digital Leadership Institute — organizers of the Ada Awards — is teaming up to promote participation of girls in Africa Code Week, and to recognize, via the 2015 African Ada Awards, outstanding girls and women in tech in Africa and the organizations who support them.

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If your organization would like to be involved in promoting the 2015 African Ada Awards, please contact us.

2015 European Ada Awards Launch

On 23 April 2015, at our fourth annual celebration of International Girls in ICT Day, the Digital Leadership Institute and its partners – the Council of European Professional Informatics Societies, DIGITALEUROPE, European Centre for Women and Technology, and European Schoolnet – launched the third edition of the European Ada Awards recognising outstanding girls and women in digital studies and careers in Europe, and the organisations who support them.

The opening ceremony for the 2015 European Ada Awards featured lightening talks by inspiring Digital Leaders including girls and women in tech from across Europe, past & current Ada Award-winners, and supporters of the Awards, including:

 

The launch of the new DLI digital innovation centre for girls and women included opening online nominations for the 2015 European Ada Awards in the following categories:

 

International Girls in ICT Day 2015:

The 2015 European Ada Awards Launch was part of an all-day Digital Leadership Institute celebration of International Girls in ICT Day 2015 that includes the following activities:

17:00-19:00 – g-Hive workshop on “Girls & The Future Internet”: A hands-on workshop for girls*, ages 13-17, to promote active participation and leadership by girls in designing and building the Internet of tomorrow, for fun, safety and wellbeing. 

19:00-20:00 – 2015 European Ada Awards Launch & “Inspiring Digital Leaders” Talks, hosted by Ms. Cheryl Miller, DLI Founder & Executive Director.

20:00-22:00 – inQube workshop “Quantify Everything”: Third workshop in the Spring 2015 “Build A Kick&ss Online Presence” series for women* by Ms. Selma Franssen, DLI Communications Director & inQube Community Manager. 

*Anyone who identifies as a girl or woman.

All DLI “Girls in ICT Day” and European Ada Awards events were an official part of the 2015 e-Skills for Jobs Campaign.

Volunteering, Donations & Sponsorship:

If you or your organisation is interested in partnering, volunteering, sponsoring girls & women to participate in DLI activities, or would like to support DLI and its mission in other ways, please contact us.  Donations to DLI are gratefully accepted and go toward furthering its mission of bridging the gender gap and the digital divide worldwide. 

Thank you to our 2014-2015 Ada Award Partners & Sponsors!

Congratulations 2014 European Ada Award-winners!

Yesterday in RomeDLI announced winners of the 2014 European Ada Awards!  Join us here in congratulating the winners, and read here the  Press Release  from our partners and sponsors about this great event!

***Congratulations to the 2014 European Digital Girls of the Year™!***

Ten and Under:

  laurenLauren Boyle (9) from Ireland:

9-year-old Lauren developed a site that was coded by a kid for kids.  She mentors at Coderdojo in Ireland teaching kids Scratch, HTML, CSS, etc., and is also part of a group called Code for Ireland who meet and develop apps for community challenges and problems to assist government.

Eleven and Over:

  Manon Van Hoorebeke (11) from Belgium:

Manon is eleven years old and started coding with Scratch at a young age.  She now actively coaches kids and especially girls to learn to code and be interested in technology by using Arduino. For two years, she has been promoting Coderdojo Belgium to reach more kids (and girls) to become interested in technology and STEM education. Her dream is to get more girls interested in technology and that more technology be taught at primary and secondary school.

***Congratulations to the 2014 European Digital Woman of the Year™!***

  Esther Roure Vila, Cisco, from Spain

A lack of female role models is what drives Esther today to be a role model herself. It also drove her to petition the entertainment industry for better female role models in STEM.  Among many achievements, Esther has launched “WISE EMEA” – ‘Women in Science and Engineering’ a Cisco employee recourse group which includes 200 members across all countries in EMEA; and WIN, ‘Women in Networking,’ – a group of female technical support engineers that aims to attract, build and retain strong female technical support engineers, which includes more than 100 female engineers.

***Congratulations to the 2014 European Digital Impact Organisation of the Year™!***

  Stemettes, United Kingdom:

The Stemettes aim to inspire the next generation of females into Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths (STEM) fields by showing them the amazing women already in STEM via a series of panel events, hackathons, exhibitions, and mentoring schemes.

Congratulations again to these very deserving winners and thank you to  our amazing partners and sponsors for making the 2014 European Ada Awards possible!