Who run IT? Girls!

To ensure women are engaged in the development process, the solution proposed is two-fold. The first part will focus on providing ICT knowledge to vulnerable women in various regions of the country. The second will convene women equipped with ICT skills to develop solutions to challenges affecting marginalized women.

Inclusive prosperity of a country’s economy fundamentally requires the full participation of women and girls in the development arena. One way of ensuring women are involved in this process is through equipping them with valuable ICT skills which will increase their employability as well as allow them to create value-additions to the economy. In Sri Lanka, as with other developing countries, the portion of women and girls who have access to technology and ICT skills remain 25% lower than when compared to men (IPS). This lack of ICT skills hinders women from being active change makers, and further marginalizes them.

If, the government is supported to develop innovative and responsive initiatives to strengthen specifically IT capacities of women to overcome socio-economic implications, provide opportunities to build a shared future, and enhance collaboration among stakeholders to support responsive policies in for women empowerment, THEN marginalization at the community level will reduce, which will address the core grievances of women. This will need to be complemented by addressing demands by vulnerable groups such as 1.3 million Female Headed Households of which are more married women than widowed. This will contribute towards women’s development and enhancing means to secure sustained economic opportunities.

The solution will directly:

- address the deficiency of women and girls in using ICT and the skills and knowledge gained through ICT tools or facilitated learning to be empowered to find to sustainably further their socio-economic status positively impacting on their human development.

- improve the ability of young women in ICT to use their skills and knowledge (whilst acquiring more during the process) to understand development challenges better and design innovative human centred tech based prototype solutions that could be scaled up 

Successful completion of the learning programme - 250 women and girls from varying socioeconomic backgrounds engaging in IT skills learning programme

Participation in the all women National HackaDev programme - Successful completion of the learning programme

Prototypes being evaluated for quality for support for further development provided - Number of prototypes developed at the National HackaDev programme

The popularity of women in the ICT field is considerably low in Sri Lanka. The proposed solution of bringing vastly different groups of women – vulnerable women with no ICT skills, to women who are equipped with ICT skills and have the capability to make a change – is innovative and novel as it is highly unlikely these women would have otherwise had the chance to meet and exchange ideas and solutions. While hackathons are utilized by others to develop solutions, we will be convening these groups to one place to find personalized solutions

The decision to bring together women from vulnerable pockets around the country to conduct ICT skills training workshops for, and to also convene other women in the ICT industry for a ‘HackaDev’ – Hacking for Development – to create ICT solutions was built around human-centered design. By convening people who are facing challenges which hinders them from becoming engaged actors of society, getting these challenges from them and developing solutions to these from women who are able to understand the societal and cultural contexts and form solutions using ICT, the solution starts, ends, and fully involves the vulnerable women.

Initially, ICT trainings will be advertised nation-wide in order to reach vulnerable pockets of women and young girls who have low to no ICT backgrounds. Ground level networks working with the UN, other development partners and private sector partners will also help in getting across to the most vulnerable of women in communities that are traditionally hard to access, especially in areas where education, and ICT knowledge more importantly, is not given priority. Additionally, women working in the ICT fields will be gathered from around the country to develop mentor programmes and to carry out the HackaDev 

The Youth and Innovation team of UNDP Sri Lanka currently have existing private sector partnerships with many leading local, regional and global organizations. Sri Lanka’s first social innovation hackathon “HackaDev” is a pioneer initiative by the Youth and Innovation team together with a leading telecommunication company, and having successfully completed three hackathons, in Colombo and regionally in the Uva province, many organizations have shown great interest in partnering with UNDP to further tap into youth perspectives especially of young women, and through this project sees great potential to fund and be a partner in the social innovation camps

Limitation of identifying significant number of young women in the IT industry to participate at these HackaDevs to find solutions to the identified thematic areas surrounding women in Sri Lanka. However, as a mitigation measure, the first component of the programme will aim to empower vulnerable women through e-learning and IT training programmes to address the identified issues. Also the inability to potentially secure funding for the scaling up of the above programme is present. However, mitigation measures have been taken to build on existing partnerships and explore new local, regional and global partners that are interested in this field

Submission for the Solve challenge, stems from our position as a convener and a champion for innovation. We identified an initiative to engage young people in the community, "HackaDev" or Hackathon, a joint initiative with the innovation arm of a telecommunications company in Sri Lanka.  Having piloted the event in three different regions, we identified problems within the initiative, which aided in developing the program and making for a more resilient model presently.  We have supported three HackaDev editions, by becoming a Solver, intentions to further add value by joining both Youth, and stakeholders with similar visions.

Private Sector:Dialog Axiata PLC - IdeaMart, and CISCO Systems 

Public Sector: Government of Sri Lanka - Disaster Management Center 

Multilateral Organization:   United Nations Development Programme, United Nations Volunteers

NA