As part of its ‘’Women at work‘’ regional project, the British Council Lebanon hosted a visit of Women professionals from the Information Technology (IT) sector in the Arab world and the UK. The participants took part in a two-day networking event on the theme ‘Preparing Women for the Digital Future: Crossing Cultural Barriers’ in Beirut on the 4th and 5th of September.
This initiative came as a part of the Women at Work programme developed by the British Council with the local support of the Women in IT organisation in Lebanon and Equalitec from the UK.
The Networking Event
The participating women have represented the voices of their peers in the discussions and debates. These have revolved around emerging technologies and access to resources, career opportunities and gender gap, promoting innovation and entrepreneurship and creating cross-cultural bonds. The discussions were facilitated and led by prominent speakers from Lebanon and the region in the fields of IT and social and economical development like Leila Serhan, Microsoft’s regional director and Dr. Nabelah Haraty from the Lebanese American University and others.
The organisations that participated were; Women in IT, Equalitec and Portia, UNDP, the Lebanese American University, The American University of Beirut, Microsoft, Social Media Exchange and others.
The aims of that networking event was to build capacity and create synergy among the participants, explore networking opportunities, share experience about good practice in mentoring and profile raising for women in the sector, and put together areas for future collaboration and professional networking between the UK and regional professional organisations.
The participating women are all professionals in the field of Information Technology whether directly through IT management or through working with international organisations with the aim of creating positive social change through IT usage.
In addition to Lebanon, the IT professional women have represented institutions from their countries in this networking event namely from: Jordan, Palestine, Syria Egypt, Tunisia, and Morocco as well as the UK.
“Our networking event is designed to maximize efficiency and build ground for sustainable relationships among participants; it will allow leading women from Lebanon, the rest of the NENA region and the UK to share ideas, experiences, success stories and explore potential ways of collaborations.” Carine Rizk, Projects Manager, British Council
Exchange Visit
In the three days preceding the networking event, women from the UK who hosted an exchange visit with Lebanese women back in February 2008 in turn have visited their Lebanese counterparts. The return visit has included a tour of the IT industry in Lebanon and participated in shadowing visits to major organisations such as Women in IT, the Lebanese League for Women in Business, Bader, Lebanese University Faculty of Engineering, the MIT Arab Forum Enterprise, the Telecommunications Regulatory Authority, Microsoft, OMSAR, Arabia GIS, and Inco Net Data Management.
"We are happy to co-host this very interesting event gathering women scientists and technology specialists from at least4 Arab countries. It will be an opportunity to share lessons learned and think collectively how to advance the position of women working in sciences and technology and get young girls interested in these fields as well." Salam Yamout, Cisco's program manager
For more information, please contact: general.enquiries@lb.britishcouncil.org
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