Denis Opudo
West New Britain Province had a privilege of hosting the 2018 GirlsInICTechWeek that kicked off on 23rd April. The event recorded the participation of 14 girls from 5 different secondary schools. The schools were Caritas Technical Secondary School, Kimbe Grammar School, Kimbe Secondary School, Kimbe International School, and Hoskins Secondary School. Besides, Trinity Secondary joined the event on its second day to make the total number of schools at six.
New Britain Palm Oil’s community projects and tax credit officer Mr. Steven Raphael officially opened the program. Pr Nelson Gah of the Seventh-day Adventist Church was in charge of the opening and learning religious speech. He was responsible for that for the three days that the program lasted. GirlsInICTechWeek’s coordinator Carole Cholai gave the opening remarks. The inaugural statement was delivered by special guest facilitator Miss Crystal Kewe. She is from Port Moresby.
The attendants underwent two sessions. The sessions were of computer technology and software and hardware courtesy of Crystal. The girls were later on grouped to carry out an activity practically. The activity involved matching devices pictures to correct terms. The attendants were mostly students of grade 12 and a single year ten. Furthermore, four students had no computer knowledge at all. The 4 had never used a computer for the whole of their lives.
Crystal narrated her story of how she left formal education. She decided to follow her passion by studying computer science. Moreover, her love for computer came from computer games. Furthermore, she had the urge to develop applications and computer games. She challenged the students to pursue their passion in whichever field they wish and work hard to improve it.
The second day of the program took place at Kimbe International School Computer Lab. Here Crystal took the students through Software Development Concept. They, later on, carried out a practical activity on developing a simple statistics website. The girls who were using a computer for the first time were taken through orientation of necessary computer skills. They were also introduced to the use of Typing Tutor and MS Word.
