The Na­pari­ma Girls’ High School (NGHS) Non No­bis Foun­da­tion en­gaged close to 100 women in an em­pow­er­ment sem­i­nar last week Sat­ur­day at the school’s au­di­to­ri­um in cel­e­bra­tion of In­ter­na­tion­al Women’s Day (IWD).

The ses­sion en­ti­tled, “Sur­viv­ing and Thriv­ing: Dig­i­tAll Tech­nol­o­gy Strate­gies for Women” was host­ed un­der the 2023 UN’s IWD theme, Dig­i­tALL: In­no­va­tion and tech­nol­o­gy for gen­der equal­i­ty.

The event was a pow­er­house for fe­male hosts and pre­sen­ters, and some NGHS alum­nae, with the pro­gramme led by Lara Quen­trall-Thomas, past chair, of the As­so­ci­a­tion of Fe­male Ex­ec­u­tives of Trinidad and To­ba­go. In her open­ing re­marks, Quen­trall-Thomas re­vealed sev­er­al thought-pro­vok­ing facts to the au­di­ence about women and tech­nol­o­gy. Quen­trall-Thomas shared that a 2022 IDB re­port stat­ed that on­ly 17 per cent of women start­ed ca­reers in soft­ware and pro­gram­ming, while an­oth­er re­port cov­er­ing 51 coun­tries high­light­ed that al­most 40 per cent of women had been ha­rassed on­line and 85 per cent had wit­nessed some form of on­line vi­o­lence.

“Al­though ad­vance­ments in dig­i­tal tech­nol­o­gy of­fer im­mense op­por­tu­ni­ties, grow­ing in­equal­i­ties are be­com­ing in­creas­ing­ly ev­i­dent in the con­text of dig­i­tal skills and ac­cess to tech­nolo­gies, with women be­ing left be­hind as the re­sult of this dig­i­tal gen­der di­vide. The need for in­clu­sive and trans­for­ma­tive tech­nol­o­gy and dig­i­tal ed­u­ca­tion is there­fore cru­cial for a sus­tain­able fu­ture,” she said.

En­gag­ing with at­ten­dees dig­i­tal­ly from over­seas was the foun­da­tion chair­per­son, Camille Ram­di­al-Cum­ber­batch, who ex­plained the gen­e­sis of the fundrais­er, “We want­ed to align our­selves with the UN’s in­ter­na­tion­al theme which fo­cused on dig­i­tal tech­nol­o­gy for women, help­ing women keep them­selves safe, while at the same time em­pow­er­ing them with in­sights as to how to max­imise the use of dig­i­tal tech­nol­o­gy in help­ing them be­come their best.”

Vernisha Ahy­oung de­liv­ered one of the af­ter­noon’s fea­ture pre­sen­ta­tions, “ICT Skills Nec­es­sary to Ex­cel as a Fe­male En­tre­pre­neur and Leader in a Dig­i­tal World”. Ahy­oung, a dig­i­tal tech­nol­o­gy ex­pert with over 25 years of ex­pe­ri­ence in ICT, de­fined and iden­ti­fied key tech­nol­o­gy skills re­quired in the 21st Cen­tu­ry and high­light­ed the dig­i­tal ap­proach­es em­ployed over dif­fer­ent gen­er­a­tions in the work­place from Tra­di­tion­al­ists to Gen­er­a­tion Z, which was rel­e­vant to the di­verse group of at­ten­dees.

Ahy­oung chal­lenged at­ten­dees to con­sid­er what they need­ed to learn to­day to be suc­cess­ful as a leader and en­tre­pre­neur of to­mor­row, and closed with a mo­ti­va­tion­al quote from Ur­su­la Burns, for­mer chair­man of Xe­rox who said, “Be­lieve that there are no lim­i­ta­tions, no bar­ri­ers to your suc­cess...you will be em­pow­ered, and you will achieve.”

Michelle Aquing-Bis­soon led the next fea­ture pre­sen­ta­tion “Us­ing Tech­nol­o­gy to Safe­guard Women” along­side mem­bers of her team from The An­drea Project. Us­ing in-per­son and video fa­cil­i­ta­tion, they di­rect­ly en­gaged with at­ten­dees, guid­ing them on how to in­stall and ac­ti­vate life-sav­ing dig­i­tal tools us­ing their smart­phones. The ob­jec­tive of this ses­sion was to high­light and share strate­gies aimed at ap­ply­ing tech­nol­o­gy to tack­le gen­der-based vi­o­lence.

The Non No­bis Foun­da­tion was es­tab­lished on the 100th an­niver­sary of the school in 2012 by past stu­dent, teacher and chair of the NGHS Cen­te­nary Com­mit­tee, Dr Jen­nifer Yamin-Ali, who shared at the event how the foun­da­tion was birthed; “I felt that af­ter 100 years, we must do some­thing tru­ly mean­ing­ful to en­sure that the true philo­soph­i­cal lega­cy of the school is per­pet­u­at­ed. The mot­to of the school is Non No­bis Solum Sed Om­nibus (Latin for not for our­selves on­ly, but for all). That mot­to trans­lates in­to ser­vice to oth­ers in keep­ing with the Pres­by­ter­ian eth­ic on which this school was found­ed.”

The NGHS Non No­bis Foun­da­tion has host­ed vol­un­teer ac­tiv­i­ties over the past 11 years, which in­clud­ed a shoe dri­ve for pri­ma­ry school stu­dents, start­ing a vol­un­teer Club at the NGHS, beach clean-up with NGHS stu­dents, vis­its to se­nior homes, work with or­phan­ages and an East­er Egg Hunt with the Autism So­ci­ety of T&T. The foun­da­tion has al­so es­tab­lished an an­nu­al ed­u­ca­tion­al grant to fi­nan­cial­ly sup­port a stu­dent who is tran­si­tion­ing in­to Sixth Form. The foun­da­tion hopes to make its em­pow­er­ment sem­i­nar an an­nu­al event for In­ter­na­tion­al Women’s Day, which is recog­nised an­nu­al­ly on March 8.