From Intel’s groundbreaking new report Women and the Web [11] to the theme of this year’s Women’s History Month—“Women Inspiring Innovation Through Imagination: Celebrating Women in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics”—the call to involve more women and girls in the technology sector has never been more unified.
This makes the recent launch of IREX’s Tech Age Girls (TAG) [12] project in the Philippines and Vietnam all the more exciting and relevant. TAG empowers a cadre of promising young women leaders to become tech-savvy agents of change in their communities.
The Tech Age Girls are bringing together their problem-solving skills with the power of technology to address issues relevant to them and their peers. In Bac Giang, Vietnam, Ngan is teaching her school’s journalism club how to use digital storytelling tools to better report news relevant to her fellow students.
"TAG changed me a lot. It made me a more confident girl. It taught me a lot of things...how to manage time, how to use technology, and it helped me to have more friends from everywhere from all over our country."
- Linh, TAG Vietnam
In the Philippines, several students are working together to leverage social media sites as a virtual meeting ground between struggling students and volunteer peer tutors. Other projects range from teaching the elderly how to use Skype to connect inexpensively with relatives working abroad to using digital art to warn at-risk youth about the dangers of teen pregnancy.
These activities are a continuation of the TAG journey the girls started late last year. Following months of training in technology and leadership skills, IREX and its partners brought together 51 Tech Age Girls—the most dedicated participants selected from hundreds of applicants—to national conferences in Hanoi and Manila. There they met successful women leaders, honed their skills at short internship placements, and mastered modern tools for personal and civic expression. At the conferences, the Tech Age Girls also learned how to design a meaningful community service project from the ground up, identifying areas of need in their home communities and potential resources to tap into, and building the knowledge they need to solve these problems.
IREX invests in these young leaders so they in turn invest in their own communities. Throughout March, the Tech Age Girls will be implementing their service projects, using the skills and knowledge they developed to reach many more individuals in their hometowns. IREX congratulates its Tech Age Girls for demonstrating the value of connecting girls with tools for making change.
Tech Age Girls [12] in the Philippines and Vietnam are projects of Global Connections and Exchange (GCE) [13], a program of the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs [14] implemented by IREX in partnership with the Thai Nguyen University Learning Resource Center and the Philippine Community eCenter Network. Follow Tech Age Girls on Facebook: TAG Philippines [15] | TAG Global. [16]