Tech Needs Girls

Description

Ron Eglash and Ellen Foster:

"Tech Needs Girls is another Ghanaian, educationally focused group that speaks to the generative justice ethos and was working from iSpace for some time. Mainly based in Accra and Kumasi, Tech Needs Girls focuses on breaking down barriers to computer programming and IT education for underprivileged girls. Ruby on Rails workshops are taught by female mentors, pushing against the sexist mentality that women cannot navigate computers or should not be involved in technological development. Tech Needs Girls supports this endeavor by directly putting the technology in question in the hands of eager, and driven young women who are typically not allowed such chances. The workshops are geared towards teaching girls to create technology and content that is contingent and inclusive of their own realities, giving them voice and a stake in the value of possible technical manipulation, and thus creating their own value educationally and otherwise.

Tech Needs Girls is also working to establish satellite organizations throughout Ghana. Instead of relying on bringing these practices into the formal classroom setting, although they would like to, they are currently working with local university students who want to be mentors and help start workshops and programming on their own terms. As Eyison of iSpace has noted with the difficulties of instigating change at the top-down governmental and policy level, Tech Needs Girls recognizes that it is difficult to transform long-standing school bureaucracies. By helping to facilitate bottom-up and generative skill-sharing and educational structures, Tech Needs Girls is empowering often marginalized groups who can go on to teach greater numbers of girls, thus generating a network of support for innovation and skill-sharing." ([1])