Tag Archives: Africa

March 23, 2015 · 2:05 pm

Camels and Crafts in Tunisia

When the TechWomen Tunisia Delegation was not touring, or eating, or meeting with remarkable STEM women and girls, we did some shopping and camel riding. The 16 March Women’s Enterprise for Sustainability (WES) – Entrepreneurship and Social Media Training included a reception with craft vendors. After the sad and scary Bardo Museum attack on 18 March 2015 in Tunis caused an early end of our formal Delegation meetings, most of the Silicon Valley delegates stayed very close to the hotel before our flights home. Luckily, there were camel rides on the beach and a Carrefour market and small shops nearby. At the Carrefour, we bought Tunisian honey, olive oil, harissa spice, and other delicacies. I also found some date candy and date syrup at the Tunis airport, so I was able to bring small gifts home.

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March 23, 2015 · 12:02 pm

TechWomen Tunisia Delegation – Short but Excellent

The TechWomen Tunisia Delegation ended early due to the violence at the Bardo Museum in Tunis on 18 March 2015. Twenty-four delegates from California’s Silicon Valley, plus four IIE San Francisco staff, our Washington DC representative from the US State Department Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, and the forteen TechWomen Fellows from Morocco, Lebanon, Algeria and Tunisia were sad for the families of those killed, and for the people of Tunisia. Some of us took pictures on 19 March holding a sign saying “We Love You Tunisia – We Will Be Back”.

We were sorry that we could not continue our inspiring meetings with technical girls and women but it seemed wise to go home sooner than scheduled. Before the tragic attack that lead to 21 deaths in one of the world’s great museums, we were able to tour (including an afternoon at the Bardo on 15 March), and connect with remarkable leaders in STEM:

Women’s Enterprise for Sustainability – Entrepreneurship and Social Media Training – 16 March
Women in Science at the Institute Pasteur de Tunis – 17 March
Women in Green Technology, hosted by Maya Organization – 17 March
Technology Workshops with Tunisian Girls hosted by the Youth for Science Foundation – Esprit Innovation Hub – 18 March

Thanks to our TechWomen Fellows in Tunisia who made these meetings possible, including: Ameni Channoufi (Service Manager, PKI operations), Amel Ghoulia (Bioinformatician – Institut Pasteur de Tunis), Olfa Khelifi (Maya Organization President and Founder), and Ines Nasri (Owner, Web Power). Due to the early end to the TechWomen Tunisia Delegation on 18 March, we were not able to participate in Tunisia Digital Day at Cite des Sciences in Tunis; however, some of the TechWomen who were scheduled to speak recorded messages for playback at the event on 19 March. I was happy to be able to distribute all 12 of the Notable Technical Women posters and 30 decks of cards to schools and educators in Tunisia (and Algeria) before I left. Other TechWomen delegates also left their educational materials. We will continue our communications with the impressive technical leaders of Tunisia now that we are home.

The Lufthansa strike made it very difficult to get home earlier. Many of us (finding that there was a two hour phone wait to try to arrange itinerary changes – if calls went through at all) abandoned our original flights and bought new tickets.

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Tagged as Africa, Algeria, Lebanon, Mentoring, Middle East, Morocco, teaching, technical women, TechWomen, Tunisia

March 16, 2015 · 1:17 pm

Wonderful Tunisian Food

Since arriving in Tunis on Friday, I have had two excellent Tunisian meals (and too much disappointing hotel “food”). The first memorable meal was lunch at a small roadside restaurant where we ate grilled lamb and chicken spiced with rosemary, with a salad of roasted green peppers with olives, and Khobz Tabouna bread.

Last night, a group of us were lucky enough to be invited to dinner at the Tunis home of the gracious and generous TechWomen Alumna Ameni Channoufi who served us

green pepper salad with olives, egg, and tuna
fresh crusty baguette-shaped bread
mixed green salad with vegetables and meat
couscous with vegetables and lamb and egg and garbanzo beans and raisins
lamb frittata (called a tagine – but very different from the Moroccan dish of that name)
fruit and sweets
green tea with mint and pine nuts

Delicious! I am looking forward to tasting more lovely dishes during my week here with the TechWomen Delegation (but I am avoiding the tasty but very hot red harissa chili pepper paste).

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March 16, 2015 · 12:06 pm

Touring with TechWomen Tunisia Delegation

This week, I am a member of a TechWomen Delegation for the sixth time – having been on every delegation since the program started. It has been my honor and pleasure to visit Emerging Leaders in Morocco (2011), Jordan (2013 – with a side trip to Lebanon), Rwanda (2014), Morocco (2014), South Africa (2015), and now, Tunisia. As always, we travel with a U.S. Department of State Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs representative, in addition to Institute of International Education (IIE) staff. I begin my ten days in Tunisia with local tours, both informal and formal, to provide cultural context. Last weekend, we visited:

Dougga – made a UN World Heritage Site in 1997 representing “the best-preserved Roman small town in North Africa”
Sidi Bou Said – a small coastal town with blue doors, winding streets, and many cats
The ancient ruins of Carthage – another UN World Heritage Site, since 1979
The North African American Cemetery and Memorial (in Carthage) where 2,841 US military casualties are interred, mostly from World War II
The Bardo National Museum in Tunis – with one of the best mosaic collections in the world
The Tunis Medina, also made a UN World Heritage site in 1979

Dougga

Sidi Bou Said

North African American Cemetery and Memorial

Carthage

Bardo Museum

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Tagged as Africa, Jordan, Lebanon, Mentoring, Middle East, Morocco, Rwanda, South Africa, technical women, TechWomen, Tunisia

March 11, 2015 · 3:13 pm

Mentoring Standard – A New Venture

High quality mentoring changes lives. Until now there has been no clear way to measure mentoring and program effectiveness in an objective, comparable system, and there has been very little data published by mentoring programs. Mentoring Standard is a new venture with the vision to create an international norm and assessment of quality and achievement for both mentors and mentoring programs, with an associated system and process for accreditation and certification.

Kathy Jenks and I are Founders of Mentoring Standard. I announced this during my “Mentors and Role Models” talk earlier today as part of the Global Tech Women Voices – 2015 virtual conference. You can learn more about Mentoring Standard on our new website: mentoringstandard.com. We look forward to your inquiries!

Thanks to Jessica Dickinson Goodman who designed and created the Mentoring Standard branding and website.

Photo of Kathy Jenks Copyright 2015 by Katy Dickinson.
Photo of Katy Dickinson presenting in Muizenberg, Cape Town, South Africa by Max Mogale

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March 6, 2015 · 1:11 pm

More Photos of TechWomen with Cards

Thanks to the honorees and supporters of the Notable Technical Women Project – particularly the amazing and talented TechWomen community! Here are new photos of TechWomen Director Arezoo Miot with a “TechWomen Emerging Leaders from Africa and the Middle East” deck in San Francisco, and four honorees in Lebanon holding their individual cards: Adla Chatila, Nisreen Deeb, Sukaina Al-Nasrawi (birthday girl!), and Maysoun Ibrahim.

More pictures of TechWomen honorees with their cards are on Notable Technical Women Project (27 February 2015).

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Tagged as Africa, Lebanon, Mentoring, Middle East, Palestine, technical women, TechWomen

February 27, 2015 · 11:07 am

Notable Technical Women Project

I am happy to report that the Notable Technical Women Project – creators and distributors of the “Notable Women in Technology” and “TechWomen Emerging Leaders from Africa and the Middle East” educational playing cards and posters – is thriving!

Keep our history
Women have been leaders in tech from the start, but not enough of our contributions are remembered.
These cards can help.

“TechWomen Emerging Leaders from Africa and the Middle East” was the first publication of the TechWomen Alumnae group, and is the first daughter of the “Notable Women in Computing” project. Between them, we are distributing information to the world about 108 technical role models! You can get involved in the project through the Duke University “CRA-W and Anita Borg Institute Wikipedia Project – Writing Wikipedia Pages for Notable Women in Computing” website: http://www.cs.duke.edu/csed/wikipedia/

Recent Notable Technical Women Project developments:

Dr. Susan Rodger (Duke University) offered “Notable Women in Computing” cards to about 1,300 SIGCSE (ACM Special Interest Group on Computer Science Education) conference registrants – and 800 placed orders (in both regular and jumbo size – for classroom use). The conference starts next week.
Great Press from Julie Bort of Business Insider on 12 February 2015, including all of the Notable Women cards: 54 Women Who Rocked the World – thanks for your many retweets!
Reach and Teach bookstore in San Mateo CA is the first to put our “Notable Women in Computing” cards on their physical shelves. Thanks to Craig Weisner and Derrick Kikuchi for their support!
Internet sales are brisk at http://www.notabletechnicalwomen.org/ – We had enough interest to place a big production order for the “TechWomen Emerging Leaders in Africa and the Middle East” posters and cards.
Jessica Dickinson Goodman is minding our online store and recording photos of educators and students all over the world using “Notable Women” cards and posters. You can see photos of cards and posters in the wild at: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/jessidg/notable-women-in-computing-card-deck/posts.
We have distributed over 3,000 cards since October 2014 (they were originally sold at the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women and Computing -aka GHC14- conference). Our first full production shipment of TechWomen cards just arrived today! The first thirty decks were printed last month through the generous donations of TechWomen mentors – and Symantec sponsored the first poster printing. Today’s shipment is being paid for by actual customers.
Eileen Brewer (Symantec) and I took cards and posters on the TechWomen Delegation to South Africa last month and will take them on the Delegation to Tunisia next month also.