AI: Women Technology Empowerment Centre trains secondary school girls
A Non-governmental organization (NGO), Women Technology Empowerment Centre (W.TEC), has completed a two weeks Artificial Intelligence (AI) empowerment summer camp for 24 secondary school girls in Lagos state.
The training tagged “SheCreatesCamp” with the theme “Solve with AI”, was necessitated primarily to target more females to embrace technology and its immense opportunities.
The Chief Executive Officer of W.TEC, Mrs. Oreoluwa Lesi, said the organisation was seeking ways to encourage more women in the STEM – Science, Technology Engineering and Maths- career path.
“We target women and girls because of the unfavourable statistics that shows that women are under-represented in the technology space and not just tech alone but the broad spectrum of STEM.
“When we look at the numbers of women who are studying and working in STEM field, it is very low. Looking at the numbers of women studying STEM degrees across the world, they only make up of 36 per cent while the rest are men.
“In Nigeria, the figures we have shows that we only have 22 per cent of women in engineering and technology.
“When we also look at the workspace, women only make up 20 per cent, so we can see that women are already in the minority in STEM field,” she noted.
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Lesi explained that the purpose of having the rudiments of AI taught among the school girls was to arouse their interests and help the society bridge the gap and disparity in the numbers of women in STEM.
“We are targeting these young girls because we want to catch them young while some of them have yet to make up their minds on the career path they want to take.
“We chose the topic `Solve with AI’ so as to introduce the topic to younger girls, we want to assist them to make informed decision about their careers.
“We are providing workshops, seminars and summer camps like this so that the little children can think about themselves and possibly pursue a career in tech or generally STEM field.
“The camp also has other activities to relax them and allows them to connect more because AI has spaces in all fields of human endeavours.
“No matter what people might have studied, there is an application of AI in them which makes it more interesting and amazing,” she said.
Lesi noted that “the children from the summer camp actually performed above my expectations as they have been able to solve complex issues using the AI, while many of them have also developed interests in STEM related subjects.
“During the intense camping, they were able to build an automated waste bin that we don’t need to use our hands to open, but can open by itself through human sensor.
“The children were also able to build an automated water dispenser machine that can operate just with human sensors, these are some of the amazing projects carried out by the girls during the summer camp,” she said.
Also, Bushroh Yussuf from Tunwase High School, said through AI she learnt about software innovations and how to create apps.
“We were also taught web designing, we sat down to think about our own ideas on how to develop apps which led us to our projects on automated waste bin and automated water dispenser machine,” she said.
Adaeze Nworah, from International School of Beam, said though she already had ideas about AI, the summer was challenging.
“I am so thrilled that we can actually sit together to think about how to make an automated water dispenser, because it took us a lot of test run to make sure that we achieved the best product.
“We had time to correct the errors and minimise the human factor that may affect the efficient usage of the water dispenser as well,” she said.
Nan/ Chidimma Gold
