On Fri­day Mi­crosoft will be host­ing its Digi­Girlz Day.

Digi­Girlz Day is Mi­crosoft’s an­nu­al tech sem­i­nar aimed at ed­u­cat­ing and em­pow­er­ing sec­ondary school girls in the Caribbean by giv­ing them the op­por­tu­ni­ty to learn about ca­reers in tech­nol­o­gy, con­nect with Mi­crosoft em­ploy­ees, and par­tic­i­pate in hands-on com­put­er and tech­nol­o­gy work­shops via the Mi­crosoft Teams plat­form.

The World Eco­nom­ic Fo­rum es­ti­mates that by 2030, 77 per cent of jobs will re­quire tech­nol­o­gy skills.

“While there is a grow­ing and un­sat­is­fied de­mand in the STEM world, added to a great deficit of women in these ar­eas. In the world on­ly 35 per cent of STEM stu­dents in high­er ed­u­ca­tion are women, ac­cord­ing to the UN­ESCO re­port. In the soft­ware in­dus­try, fe­male rep­re­sen­ta­tion does not usu­al­ly ex­ceed 10 per cent,” a re­lease from Mi­crosoft stat­ed.

“In that way, Digi­Girlz aims to bridge the gen­der gap in tech­nol­o­gy by in­tro­duc­ing young women to the vast world of tech­nol­o­gy through keynotes, lec­tures and par­tic­i­pa­to­ry work­shops such as cod­ing and app build­ing. By ed­u­cat­ing young women, Mi­crosoft seeks to in­spire them to con­sid­er a ca­reer in tech­nol­o­gy. More than 65,000 stu­dents have at­tend­ed the Mi­crosoft Digi­Girlz Tech­nol­o­gy Pro­grams (both camps and one-day events) since they be­gan in 2000,” it stat­ed.

Re­gard­ing the im­por­tance of Digi­Girlz, Mi­crosoft Caribbean Edu Lead, Car­la Lopez, stat­ed “Gen­der in­clu­sion is im­por­tant to Mi­crosoft since there is still a sig­nif­i­cant gen­der dis­par­i­ty in the work­place. We hope to ed­u­cate, mo­ti­vate, and grow the num­ber of women work­ing in tech­nol­o­gy through Digi­Girlz. By im­part­ing this in­for­ma­tion to girls and teenagers, we are ex­pand­ing their hori­zons pro­fes­sion­al­ly and fos­ter­ing the emer­gence of a whole new gen­er­a­tion of tech­no­log­i­cal ex­perts.”

Digi­Girlz Day is a free, one-day pro­gram, avail­able to all sec­ondary school girls in T&T.

The vir­tu­al event will ed­u­cate par­tic­i­pants about trends and op­por­tu­ni­ties in the di­verse field of tech­nol­o­gy and will in­clude Q&A with sea­soned pros, and an ex­plo­ration of some of the hottest new tech out to­day.

Mi­crosoft said the Web event is geared to­wards ig­nit­ing their cu­rios­i­ty, un­leash­ing their imag­i­na­tion, de­vel­op­ing their tech­no­log­i­cal skills, learn­ing, hav­ing fun and above all, help­ing them see all that they are ca­pa­ble of.