2020 Pass It On Award Winners

Who We Are

The Afribbean Tech Collective is an organization committed to building multi-generational communities of African and Caribbean women pursuing creative and tech-based careers. Through our events and programs, we are addressing the underrepresentation of African and Caribbean women in tech at all stages of their lives.

Our Project

The African Caribbean Experience in Tech (ACX-T) is a virtual pre-college immersion program for African and Caribbean girls interested in pursuing tech majors in the university.

The first of its kind to ever exist, this event is aligned with our organizational mission of connecting African and Caribbean girls with tech-based education and tech career advancement opportunities.

We have a goal to introduce them to a sisterhood of supportive women technologists for mentorship, foster cross-continental collaboration, and inspire multigenerational communities of African and Caribean women who use technology as a currency for building, strengthening, and developing their homes and communities.

With our College Major Open House led by female STEM majors of African/ Caribbean descent, #Explore Masterclasses on different tech disciplines, Lean In Circles with techies of African/ Caribbean descent and our #BuildFromHome classroom sessions in UI/ UX and Web Development, we hope to give our sistas an immersive experience with tech.

Connect with the project lead here.

Read more about Afua Boateng.

The program LatinXplorers in Tech will be designed as a second stage learning environment for all the girls that have attended our basic programming workshops with the collaboration of Southwest LatinX. Southwest LatinX is a nonprofit organization in which its mission is to empower the local youth in El Paso, Texas through education, technology, media, and community engagement. We will be serving economically disadvantaged girls with the majority being daughters to migrant working families in our borderland.

This project will be a unique program in our Borderland, in which advanced computer science workshops will be developed in a fun environment, learning about python, programming with Arduino and Adafruit, website development, machine learning, virtual reality, and artificial intelligence. Our goal is to empower girls in our community to learn how technology is applied to many fields. Secondly, we want to spark their interest in a technology career and higher education. Thirdly, we want them to have enough skills to continue learning by their own and be able to start or contribute in a project that will benefit our community.

LatinXplorers in Tech will start in the upcoming months as a virtual coding club for girls where we will work on multiple projects along with mentors, who are Latina role models in the tech field. Bianca’s vision for the future of women in the tech industry is to see Latina girls having the same opportunity to learn programming skills at a young age, regardless of their ethnicity or economic status.

Bianca is pursuing a M.S. in Software Engineering at The University of Texas at El Paso. She was Vice President of UTEP’s chapter ACMW, National Center for Women & Information Technology (NCWIT) AspireIT Program Leader, and CAHSI Scholar 2019-20. She is passionate about empowering Hispanic girls through technology and educational programs.

Brazilians in Tech is the first Brazilian platform to gather relevant information on Science and Technology and provide resources to Brazilian women studying and working in STEM. The platform was created to welcome and encourage women to pursue their academic and professional paths in STEM.

The main purpose of Brazilians in Tech is to promote the idea that anyone can inspire the next generation, giving visibility to projects and achievements of women in STEM, regardless of their work (locally or nationally). Also, it is important that girls and women from all regions of Brazil have access to information to aid in being successful in whatever they choose.

The platform was designed based on the pillars of Visibility, Networking, Connection, and Growth. Visibility in promoting and showcasing women thriving in the Science, Technology, and Engineering areas in Brazil, serving as an inspiration to other girls. Our platform enables the networking and exchange of knowledge and ideas among the participants, providing connection, and a sense of belonging. Through visibility, networking, and connection, along with the initiatives in professional development, we are building and empowering girls and women who are part of the community and helping them grow in their careers within STEM. One of our programs offers professional development opportunities through workshops, panels, and talks organized with partner companies.

Aligned with our purpose, Brazilians in Tech offers the resources to encourage, connect, and empower Brazilian women studying and working in STEM. The connection between women in STEM is essential to promote collaboration and strengthen the idea that everyone belongs to STEM. We want Brazilians in Tech to be the starting point for finding projects, events, workshops, scholarships, inspirational stories, and more!

Learn more about Carolina Moreira Oliveira.

She Makes A Revolution using Technology (SMART) Girls, is an afterschool program aimed at developing the interest of girls in computer science by teaching coding and programming classes designed to be hands-on, supportive, enriching and most importantly, fun!

Classes will be taught to stimulate design, creativity, problem solving, inventiveness, and learning in participants. Training will be in python and scratch programming language, animation, and robotics. Participants will discover the simplicity, beauty, and excitement of computer science. Target beneficiaries are disadvantaged girls between the ages of 10 – 17 attending low income secondary schools. Forty girls will be trained over a six-week period. Participants will have a field trip to one of the major tech companies in Lagos. This will help motivate the girls and show them real life ICT work environment. They will also be connected to female role models/mentors who have excelled in their STEM careers.

The project will support participants to create a coding club which will serve as a safe learning space for girls to make mistakes without the fear of being judged. The coding club will have an open membership policy with girls serving as teachers to train boys. This will build the girls’ confidence and leadership skills. The process will also change the relationship dynamics between boys and girls and allow boys to view girls as leaders.

Learn more about Ester Oyewole.

CodeHack is an initiative by Pwani Teknowgalz that targets young girls and women aged 17 – 28 years from marginalized communities in Mombasa, to learn employable coding skills in website and mobile development, graphics design and Python Programming. Having worked with girls in High school through programs such as Technovation and Africa Code Week, we have noted with great concern that girls who are passionate about technology, yet from humble backgrounds, remain idle with little hope to pursue their passion in technology upon completion of high school. Through CodeHack, we buttress their aspirations which are consequently actualized.

Pwani Teknowgalz has witnessed the invaluable impact their efforts have had to provide women access to technological skills. Indeed, there is no doubt that the influence is far-reaching. Such women, upon acquiring the digital skills, multiply the impact by reinvesting back into their families as well as mentoring fellow women in their communities. We believe that by providing young women with skills in mobile application development through CodeHack, we advance their economic empowerment. Moreover, it equips them with relevant skills and confidence to be part of developing technology solutions rather than being consumers.

During this pandemic, Pwani Teknowgalz is honored to have support and partnership from 21C Skills Africa and Liquid Telecom to continue with CodeHack Training online. Young women in the program will gain access to skills virtually. These skills are Data Science, Artificial intelligence and IoT. The young women are eager to acquire these employable coding skills and make an impact within their communities.

Peldemy is a project which seeks to train females in the senior high schools in Ghana with computer programming skills. Together with Naa Ashiorkor Nortey, we train students in python programming and the Page GUI so that they can develop solutions to simple problems around them. Aside from the physical tutorial sessions, I am working on an e-learning platform, which students would use to study during their vacation. This includes video tutorials, audio recordings, pdf’s and online quiz taking. While the physical tutorial sessions run during the school period, students are able to continue studying remotely during their vacation.

Though the physical training sessions are provided for both male and female students, the online session is provided free for only females within the program. This is done because the main focus is on getting more females to embrace computing. Doing so provides the girls with extra resources and guidelines to be able to equally compete with the boys. The short term goal of this project is to get more girls with basic programming skills to participate in local competitions. At the end of the year, a quiz competition between the students is organized and promising female students are duly recognized. The program started with two Senior High Schools and we are looking forward to expanding to other schools in Ghana.

In the long term, I look forward to getting more volunteer tutors to sign up and provide materials and resources on other courses, so that it is not just limited to python programming. Also, I am mentoring the girls in the schools to become assistant tutors to the new members that would join in the coming years. As girls gain interest in computing in the senior high schools, they are most likely to pursue computing-related courses when they get to the university level.

Learn more about Martha Teye.

Sara will run a series of STEM workshops for refugee children whose lives have been interrupted and therefore are out-of-school. These workshops will take place in either Eritrea and/or Ethiopia, for young women.

Sara designed a curriculum for offline teaching in case there is no internet access and plans to train female teachers, so the workshops are sustainable and she is not needed. All equipment will also be left with the teachers to continue to run workshops, making it long-lasting.

Last May, she sourced $4K worth of tech resources to run a voluntary STEM workshop in East Africa. She conducted STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) workshops for 20 teachers and 300 students in Eritrea. The workshops were well received and students who had never used a computer before left with career ambitions to become an engineer.

Sara graduated with first-class honors from the University College London and spent her undergraduate studies trying to understand how we can democratize technology. She wrote her dissertation on the digital divide and with every internship experience, volunteered in an education technology role.

Sara was awarded ‘Young ICT Leader’ by the UN’s International Telecommunications Union in 2019 and is eager to provide more learning experiences for children who are out-of-school.

She is currently studying for her master’s degree in Child Development at the University of Oxford, which focuses on the influence of technology/hands-on physical computing on a child’s self-efficacy.

Learn more about Sara Berkai.

BusiMoms by Mothers Alliance Network, is a digital platform and community shop that provides a marketplace for unemployed or self-employed mothers to sell their products and services to consumers. Our aim is to provide an exclusive platform providing patronage for businesses owned by teenage and middle-aged mothers in Ghana.

9 million Ghanaian women are faced with the challenge of sacrificing their job for the care of their children and over 1 million of which stay or work from home for the rest of their lives, in order to provide care for their children, If not tackled, over 10 million Ghanaian women would be losing out of being financially independent and Ghana would lose out on attaining the UN SDG’s 5,8 and 10 by 2030.

Our product and services include:

·       Training & Recruitment

·       Children Day Car Centre

·       Micro Loans

·       Businmoms Mobile App & Marketplace

·       Advocacy & Corporate Campaign

Mothers Alliance Network is an organization that provides innovative based training and support for teenage and middle age women to simultaneously raise their children and pursue their career ambitions successfully.

Read more about Wilhemina  A. Anang-Addo.