On April 26th, WIDE had the honour and the pleasure to celebrate the internationally renowned GIRLS IN ICT DAY in Luxembourg-ville, the event being hosted at the Lycée des arts et metiers. The all-day event was a success as more around 50 high school girls participated to various workshops throughout the day on topics such as: video-game design, cyber security, robotics, bbc micro:bit. The event followed the same mission and path that our organization has been trying to promote for more than 3 years now, namely to encourage young girls and women to get acquainted and specialized in the digital sector. “Even if women do not wish to necessarily pursue a career in IT, it is important for them to have at least the basic notions, because today technology in everywhere.” explains Marina Andrieu, Wide’s executive director. Moreover, she states : “Many start up projects initiated by women do not survive on the long term precisely because of this gap of technical skills.”
Among the day’s highlights was the visit of Lydia Mutsch, ministre de l’Egalité des chances au Luxembourg, together with Věra Jourová, the European commissioner for gender equality.
In the evening the audience listened to inspiring stories and insights from our guest speakers: Véronique Schaber, our host and director of Lycée des Arts et Métiers Luxembourg, Sophie Docquier, managing director at Accenture Belux, Anush Manukyan, researcher in robotics and AI, Hélène Recotillon, from ESIEA (Ecole supèrieure d’informatique électronique automatique) France, Nina Monteverde, SAP manager at Accenture Luxembourg and Thomas Musiolik, CTO at Accenture Luxembourg. The panel, moderated by Marina Andrieu was followed by a cocktail.
International Girls in ICT Day is celebrated every year on the fourth Thursday of April. To date, over 300.000 girls and young women have taken part in more than 9.000 celebrations of International Girls in ICT Day in more than 160 countries worldwide. (source Girls in ICT Portal-ITU)
Our gratitude goes to our partners who helped us organized this first edition in Luxembourg:
- Lycée des Arts et Métiers Luxembourg
- Accenture Luxembourg
- Ministère de l’Egalité des chances Luxembourg
- Digital Luxembourg
- Commission européenne au Luxembourg
This initiative has been mentioned in the press: