It is estimated that only around 17% of ICT specialists are women, creating a large gender gap in the ICT workforce. In an attempt to encourage more females to take an interest in this field, MOE has branched out and partnered with UNICEF to host an annual ICT event for girls. Jomarie Lanza was there today in Cayo and here's what she learned.

Dian Maheia, CEO MOE
"Lead like a girl is our second annual celebration of motivating, encouraging and exposing girls to the ICT world. What we have done here is collaborated and brought together over 100 girls from secondary school second form girls and it's 100 who are in second form there are 10 who are out of school girls and they are brought together for coding challenges and computer science exposure."

"Fun Fact: the girls are randomized. No one girl is sitting at a table with another girl from the same school so as they work together in teams to complete the various challenges they have to learn to get to know each other. I was taking with someone just now who pointed out the wonderful nature of girls. They just met each other but they are hugging each other for pictures and that sort of thing so that is what we want. We want girls to get to know other girls as well as hopefully gather a chance to have exchanges with some of the professionals who are here today."

The competition is broken down into three phases, giving each group of girls a set amount of time to put their heads together and achieve points for their team at the table.

Namrita Balani, Director of Science and Technology
"So our idea is that we want to do something hands on we want to give them some basic concepts into ICT."

"And so there are three phases. Phase one is binary. Right so we are teaching them what binary is and how you convert, so binary is computer language zeros and ones. And there is five questions in phase one. We have it set up with MENTI so when they are finished the people who answer correctly and the fastest that's how we are getting the points so each table has one chrome book set up. Phase two is a code.org activity computed python and it sort of teaches them functions. And phase three we have developed with group theology so they have to decode the message using the cryptology we have created. And you know as the phase goes it gets a bit harder and we are encouraging them to work together and to do this."

It's the second ICT annual event being hosted by the ministry with support from UNICEF, only this time with a few unexpected guests like the GG and special envoy who stopped in to see what's it all about

Dian Maheia, CEO MOE
"We have had such wonderful responses. The schools are really supportive. We can't ask for that many students but whatever we ask for the schools help with supporting there are schools from across the country that are represented here 25 schools so that is great. Our partner support is also significant UNICEF Belize as much in the importance of this event as we do and we have seen where girls are already benefiting from exposure"