On Sunday 12th of March, about 50 Costa Rican girls got inside the world of tablet applications working with Android operating system.
Youth from the areas of San José, Limón and Orosi, participated in a camp organized by the Young Girls program of the Omar Dengo Foundation (FOD) and Motorola Solutions Foundation.
This initiative aims to bring 340 girls to topics such as programming, robotics and 3D digital animation, with the goal of generating leadership, communication and strategic skills for preparing themselves for their future.
“We are interested in being able to involve young women, mainly adolescents in technology projects. As young people they are, they always have a keen interest in technology, but there is not necessarily an attitude towards it”, said Ana Lourdes Acuña of the FOD. According to her, the initiative aims to encourage children to be able to create technology and not just being consumers.
Learning activities include the development of applications for Android mobile devices, “using objects, modifying their attributes, incorporating multimedia content and programming visible and functional events”.
According to La Nación report of February this year, out of “93,301 new professionals in science and technology, 48% are women. Female graduations have achieved an annual growth rate of 11.8%, while that in male graduations is 7.9%. ”
Young people develop their digital skills in 3D
However, there is still a way to go. For that reason, Leda Muñoz, executive director of the FOD, stressed that the absence of women in technology has been very marked over the years. “That’s why we want girls and young people to feel able to find space in this area,” she said.
The workshops will be replicated in other regions of the country, because soon they will be taught in Santa Cruz de Guanacaste. Other regions that are interested can contact us at our email: fundacionomardengo at fod.ac.cr.
This post is also available in: Spanish