World Vision hosts TizaaWorks YouthSpark Conference

World Vision hosts TizaaWorks YouthSpark Conference

As part of activities to mark this years International youth Day, World Vision hosted a YouthSpark Conference.

YouthSpark

Photo Credit : TizaaWorks

World Vision, new implementing partners of Tizaaworks held an event to mark International Youth Day in Accra, Ghana. TizaaWorks is a Microsoft YouthSpark and Microsoft 4Afrika Initiative introduced by Microsoft Ghana.

TizaaWorks is an online platform for employability and entrepreneurship. It helps equip young graduates and school-leavers with the right employable skills to prepare them for the job market. That’s hard and soft skills to bridge the skills gap and secure first-time job opportunities. It also provides career guidance and resources for those wanting to build their businesses. The platform offers information on personality assessment, virtual interviews, CV writing, business idea pitching, writing cover letters, job vacancies and free online courses.

The YouthSpark conference featured a presentation on the Sustainable Development Goals, a training on entrepreneurship, poetry, choreography and music. Here are some pictures from the event.

The TizaaWorks online platform offerings include:

* Plan your career – career counselling, job market info and stats
* Get trained – mentor matching, IT training, entrepreneurship, CV writing, soft & language skills
* Find a job – job matching tool Entrepreneurs – Start-up training, funding tools, social entrepreneurship and  freelance opportunities.
* Get engaged – Community-based networking platform for users to share ideas and volunteer opportunities
Follow Tizaaworks on social sites Facebook, Twitter: @TizaaWork, Website: Tizaaworks

More Info: TizaaWorks

 

Young Female Coders Make What is Next

Young Female Coders Make What is Next

Young Female Coders from Ghana, other African nations and the Middle East share their experiences on coding and how they are making what is next.

Female Coders
In the video below 12 ladies share what’s it’s been like for them in a field mostly associated with the masculine gender. Selasi Gborgla and Nana Akosua Attuah from Ghana also speak on the subject.

A study suggest;

Computer code written by women has a higher approval rating than that written by men – but only if their gender is not identifiable, new research suggests. BBC Technology

 

Microsoft is committed to supporting many young girls, until “a coder” is not “a he” anymore.

 

 

 

Source: Microsoft

Microsoft Ghana and Techno Brain Ghana Offering Free CRM training to Students

Microsoft Ghana and Techno Brain Ghana Offering Free CRM training to Students

TECHNO BRAIN Ghana is partnering with MICROSOFT through it’s 4Afrika initiative program to organize Free Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Training for students in Ghana.

Techno Brain (1)

This a fully funded initiative by Microsoft Africa and facilitated by Techno Brain certified trainers to help students in building up skills careers in the area of CRM with certification.

The Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Academy focuses on building capacity for bridging the skill gaps in the CRM domain.
Under the Microsoft 4Afrika initiative, it has an exciting skilling and employment platform created for students to enroll into the CRM Academy program.
This is a great opportunity for students to gain the required skill set and increase their competitive edge to meet the challenges of the job market with no cost involved, as Microsoft will be sponsoring both training and examination.
This Academy has been hosted in partnership with Techno Brain in Kenya and Ghana.

To participate in the program, all you have to do is logon to the Techno Brian website www.crmacademy.technobraingroup.com and register/apply to participate in the free training programme.
You can register with any of these Microsoft account email addresses that ends with ( @hotmail.com, @outlook.com and @live.com)

Some benefits of participating in the program include:

1. Programme fully funded by Microsoft
2. Trained & Mentored by Certified Trainers from Microsoft
3. Leading to Global Certifications (Free Certificate by Microsoft)
4. Gain holistic skilling: ICT and Industrial Skills among others.
5. The BEST 25 Trainees will have the opportunity to work with Microsoft Partners.

If you need more information about the program,  kindly call these numbers for assistance:
0276423336 and 0246902968.

Remember, it’s fully funded by Microsoft, so ITS FREE for all participants

If you are a student on any campus, give this a try this vacation period and tell us what you think.

Source: MSPGTUC , Techno Brain

World Vision replaces IICD as TizaaWorks Partners

World Vision replaces IICD as TizaaWorks Partners

Microsoft Ghana collaborates with World Vision Ghana to run TizaaWorks, it’s employability platform after IICD it’s founding implementing partner ceased operations.

tizaaworkTizaaWorks online platform is a Microsoft YouthSpark and Microsoft 4Afrika Initiative introduced by Microsoft Ghana.

TizaaWorks is a national one-stop online hub for employability and entrepreneurship to equip young graduates and school-leavers with the right employable skills to prepare them for the job market;
hard and soft skills to bridge the skills gap and secure first-time job opportunities, in addition to providing career guidance and resources for those wanting to build their own businesses.

IICD founding partners of TizaaWorks ceased it operations on 31st December 2015 after 20 years of operation.

“December 2015 marks an end of an era for IICD. In what is perhaps its final act of graceful self-effacement,”  – Kentaro Toyama, IICD International Advisory Board Member

Our gratitude goes out to our staff, global network of ICT4D professionals, and local and international partners who throughout the years trusted and supported our work to enable people in developing contexts to become drivers of positive social change.

“At IICD, we are confident that under the new leadership of the World Vision team, TizaaWorks will continue to make a difference for youth on their pathway to fulfilling their employment and entrepreneurship endeavors.
We wish the best of luck to the new implementing partner, and to the youth in Ghana – many meaningful opportunities for professional development.

We would strongly like to add a thank you to Microsoft for the collaboration and gratitude to all local partners who supported TizaaWorks in 2015” – Ewelina Szopinska

Microsoft Country Manager Ghana, Derek Appiah on the new partnership said,

“Having operated in Ghana for 10 years, one of our main objectives has been to invest in the country’s education and youth.
With the help of partners like IICD, we have been successful in launching TizaaWorks to improve youth employability and we look forward to reaching even more youth through our new partner World Vision, who have been driving similar projects on the continent.
Our ambition as we move forward is to reach even more young Ghanaians by engaging with local partners to connect them with online and physical opportunities in training, employment and entrepreneurship.”

World Vision Ghana’s Andrew Ofosu-Dankyi, speaking on becoming the new implementing partners;

World Vision Ghana collaborates with Microsoft to equip 20,000 disadvantaged youth from rural communities countrywide, with employable skills to prepare them for the job market.

“With our development interventions already benefitting over four million children and their families, our hope is that this partnership will deepen our objective to ensure rural youth acquire relevant employability and entrepreneurial skills.
In addition, the project will expose these youths to flexible ICT education, which will help them to match competitively with their counterparts in the cities.”

TizaaWorks offers access to free courses to develop the youth’s professional skills, aggregates the best, ensuring access to rich content and exposing them to the various learning and training organisations that can help them realize their career aspirations.

The TizaaWorks online platform offerings include:

* Plan your career – career counselling, job market info and stats
* Get trained – mentor matching, IT training, entrepreneurship, CV writing, soft & language skills
* Find a job – job matching tool Entrepreneurs – Start-up training, funding tools, social entrepreneurship and freelance opportunities.
* Get engaged – Community-based networking platform for users to share ideas and volunteer opportunities
Follow Tizaaworks on social sites Facebook, Twitter: @TizaaWork, Website: Tizaaworks

Source : Microsoft |  IICD |  World Vision Ghana

Anne-Marie Abban-Demetrius Shares Her WiSci STEAM Camp 2015 Experience

Anne-Marie Abban-Demetrius Shares Her WiSci STEAM Camp 2015 Experience

Anna-Marie

10 Ghanaian students were selected to take part in the WiSci STEAM Camp 2015 in Rwanda and Anne Marie Abban Demitrus shares her experience about the event.

That was when my perspective totally changed. I have since developed a keen interest in the sciences and opened up to the limitless opportunities available. I thought I wanted to be a lawyer, but now I think I’ll try my hands on computer engineering first.  –  Anne-Marie

Women in Science (WiSci) STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics), WiSci STEAM Camp is an event organized by the U.S. Department of State, Microsoft 4Afrika, Intel, AOL Charitable Foundation, the United Nations Foundation’s Girl Up campaign, and the Rwanda Girls Initiative, with support from Meridian International Center, the Rwandan Ministry of Education, the African Leadership Academy, and the Global Entrepreneurship Network. The WiSci camp is part of the Let Girls Learn initiative, launched by the White House to open the doors of education for girls around the world. The STEAM camp (STEM + Art & Design) was established to tackle the gender imbalance in the fields of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) globally.

“Did you know that although 74 percent of girls in middle school express an interest in STEM-related fields, only 0.3 percent end up pursuing a college degree in computer science?”

Here is Anne Marie’s account of her experience, (you can see Anne-Marie talk about a technology to help with the Accra floods situation she worked on as a project in the video below between 1’18-1’53);

Me? Science camp? Me? Wow! I smiled to myself. These were the very thoughts that ran through my head when I was informed that I would be attending the first ever Wisci STEAM camp for girls in Rwanda, with several sponsors including Girl up, Intel and Microsoft. You see, I am… no sorry, was, an art inclined student. I loved everything that had at least a shred of the concept of self-expression. I mean I would be in a literature class and babble about how the writer of a particular poem felt isolated and empty inside and yearned to find a connection with the outside world to remedy his deep heartfelt anguish, when the line simply read, ‘I stared into the distance.’ That was my life. I was on top of my art class, loved English and couldn’t bear to part with French orals.

Three weeks changed all of that.

‘Oh my goodness. We’re here! We’re finally here!’ screamed the ever hyper Isabelle Quaye. ‘Isabelle shut up!’ came the tired replies of all the rest of the Ghanaians who tumbled out of the Kenya Airways aircraft on to the tarmac. Fatigued as we were one fact was undeniable, we were all secretly thrilled but somewhat skeptical to be here. When we finished the whole procedure and got to baggage claim, I suddenly straightened up and quickly brushed down my jeans. There was MAN CANDY in the house!! An extremely gorgeous Middle Eastern guy had joined the queue. Then (as expected!) a squabble broke out. We girls started arguing over who was going to be the future wife of Mr. Smoking Hot. Ten girls fighting over one guy who did not even look at us twice. Then something hit me- we were not going to see any boys for the next three weeks! Lord help us.

The first week was the Microsoft week. I honestly wasn’t looking forward to it. I half expected to walk into the class and see written on the board: INTRODUCTION TO MICROSOFT EXCEL… or something of that sort. Instead, I met this young bashful female trainer with a very cheery look who welcomed us with, ‘hey girls are you excited to learn about KODU?’ Momentary Pause. Rewind. Play. Err… k-ko-what? A gaming application it was, designed to allow the user to create either an animation or a game or even both depending on the user’s preference which excluded the intricate complications of actual game coding. And so my fellow readers, we spent the next five days drowning in the need to understand a whole gaming application full of commands and ,’when KODU sees apple, DO, EAT’. The classes were fun and quite stressful, no lie about that, but that was when I actually began to see myself doing things like this. I didn’t notice it at first but after the frustrations of the frozen computers, and crashing applications, I realized that I did experience joy during those five days. Was my perception changing? Could I develop a love for the sciences?

Then there was the Intel week. Our trainer informed us that we would be working with C++. Ah, I said to myself, this is a programming langu… My smile dropped. I knew next to nothing about programming languages! I told myself the week was going to be hard. As it turned out, the week was actually the best for me. I enjoyed working with programmable boards, drawing up codes for sensors and LED lights and arguing about codes written. My trainer even said smiling,’You will definitely be a software engineer!’ and to crown it all, the project my team developed, won the best prize for Technical Rigor.

That was when my perspective totally changed. I have since developed a keen interest in the sciences and opened up to the limitless opportunities available. I thought I wanted to be a lawyer, but now I think I’ll try my hands on computer engineering first.

Even with the several countries represented, I think I got first hand insight into how technology works in the various countries. I didn’t even know that in Rwanda there is a portable device which checks your blood pressure level as well as your cholesterol level. HA! Bet you didn’t even know either! I was able to understand that even in developing technologies, you also have to consider the culture of the society you are developing for, because just maybe you might create something you think is the ultimate solution but when implemented, might just pose as another problem for the citizens and indigenes. I mean how insightful is that?

Moving on… Did you know that in terms of leadership qualities, I am a lion? Yes. I am. I like to be in total control of things and of course, I exude confidence. This I found out during a leadership workshop at camp. I will never forget the time when I was put into a group with fellow lions. We were then given a very simple task and asked to execute it. Oh but we argued like professional attorneys. I for one was the main participant. I then learnt that it’s just how you go about things that make a difference with the work relationship you form with people.

This eye-opening advantage is one I wish that every girl in the world should be given. If I hadn’t gone for this camp, I would have missed out on the strong bonds formed, the laughter, the knowledge shared, the tears when camp ended and finally, these very dear memories I will forever hold and cherish.

Source: Huffingtonpost