Code for Nepal Empowers Women, 15 photos
02 Sep 2014 - codefornepal
From July 21st to August 1st, we organized a digital empowerment training for 21 young women in Nepal. The two-week training boosted their digital skills and empowered them as future leaders.
1. On the first day of the training, we introduced each other and asked the Code for Nepal Fellows to interview one of their classmates and publish a profile of her on their blogs. 
2. One of our goals was to help students develop a digital toolkit over the course of the training. On the second day, Rajneesh Bhandari, gave a lecture about digital journalism and helped students create accounts on YouTube, SoundCloud, and other social media platforms.
3. We know it’s not easy to thrive in the digital world without being entrepreneurial. On the third day of the class,
Amit Agrawal, CEO of Janaki Technology Pvt. Ltd., a growing tech company in Nepal, talked about launching a startup.
4. There are millions of blogs in the world but very few gain traction among their audience. An exceptional blogger, Jemima Sherpa, shared her experience of gaining an audience and finding a voice on her blog, www.whathasgood.com.
5. During the past few years, thanks to social media, more people have been able to express their opinions and shape public debate in Nepal. Last year, #OccupyBaluwatar was organized by a group of young, civic minded and social media savvy individuals.
One of the key organizers of the movement, Pranika Koyu, shared her experience of how people used social media to organize themselves and protest against violence against women in Nepal.
6. To provide a larger context of how social media is being used in Nepal, Aakar Anil also guest lectured.
7. We invited Shailendra Raj Giri, a human resource expert and entrepreneur in Nepal to talk about professional development and what it takes to get hired in Nepal. He shared his inspiring journey about working to reform the human resources industry in Nepal. He is also the founder of www.merojob.com, Nepal’s top online job site.
8. The digital empowerment training was specifically for women, but like most industries in Nepal, the social media market is heavily dominated by men. Shilpa Singhal is a social media and marketing expert with Janaki Technology. She shared her experience and talked about social media marketing strategies.
9. Our digital empowerment training was not just about social media and digital skills but also about leadership. Our students practiced public speaking with Smarika KC, a leading Nepalese debater who competes internationally.
10. Mia Mitchell, Co-founder of Code for Nepal, taught students about Wikipedia and the gender disparity among Wikipedia editors. She also showed students how to set up their own accounts and make edits to the online encyclopedia.
11. We know that you can’t be fully digitally empowered if you don’t know how to access, clean and visualize data. Ravi Kumar, Co-founder of Code for Nepal, gave students hands-on training on how to use open data to create visualizations that can aid policymakers.
12. If 10 years ago, English was the most important language to learn to do well in the world, now, the equivalent of English is coding. Prerana Paudel, a computer science student gave an introductory HTML/CSS presentation to our fellows. After the presentation, our fellows created accounts on Codecademy.
13. After all these wonderful workshops, the big moment came: it was time to complete any remaining any assignments and get certificates. We hosted our graduation ceremony at Fuji Hotel in Thamel.
14. Ammu Kannampilly, AFP Bureau Chief in Kathmandu, spoke about journalism and the digital age during our graduation ceremony.
15. We are grateful for everyone’s help and support with the Digital Empowerment Training! We are working to organize more workshops like this in Nepal. Connect us on Twitter and Facebook to keep up with the latest news. And last, we leave you with some beautiful art by Sabnam Shrestha, one of our trainees.