 Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the European celebration of the girls in ICTs. Good afternoon to everyone who is following us today. My name is Jarosław Ponder and I'm the head of the... I have some echo. Good afternoon to everyone. I'm hearing the echo. I'm very sorry for this technical problem, I will start one more time and I will ask the technical team to double check. Okay, I see that this has been already corrected. So ladies and gentlemen, one more time, welcome to the girls in ICTs celebrations in particular and the European celebration. My name is Jarosław Ponder and I'm the head of the ITU office for Europe UN Specialized Agency in charge of the ICTs. It's my great pleasure to welcome you here with us. Before we start, I would like to briefly give the floor to Antonela, our technical moderator, who is herself a girl in ICT. Antonela, the floor is yours. Thank you. Dear participants, thank you for joining. My name is Antonela and I will be the remote participation moderator for this event. I would like to give some instructions on Zoom webinar platform. You can view and activate the captioning by clicking on closed caption in the bottom bar of the Zoom interface. For any question or comment, you can use the Q&A function on the bottom bar of the Zoom interface. You can type a question and you can also upload somebody else's question. Thank you really much and have a nice event. Many thanks, Antonela. I would like to inform everyone that this event is live streamed on YouTube, Twitter, and on our official ITU webcasting services. I have now the pleasure to introduce a message from Dorin Bogdan-Martin, director of the Telecommunication Development Bureau and our role model in promoting the equality of gender. I would like to request to play the video. It's 10-year anniversary. This is one of the top events on my calendar every year, but this year is special as we mark 10 years over the course of which we have celebrated girls and ICT day events in more than 170 countries with 11,000 events. I'm so pleased to see that ITU's European partners, stakeholders, and supporters are getting together to promote exciting career opportunities for girls and young women in the tech sector. Collective cross-sectoral efforts are vital to empower girls in technology, not only for the benefit of girls themselves, but for society at large. By giving girls the tools to explore the world of tech with curiosity and imagination, we can stimulate innovations that use ICT to solve some of the biggest challenges of our times. We do have a number of projects underway that give me great hope. Regional initiatives in Europe that target accessibility, affordability, and skills development continue to be crucial in advancing digital inclusion and sustainable development for all. New studies such as the ITU and UN Women Report on Women, Girls, and ICT in the context of COVID-19 are helping identify key factors and trends in the participation of women in the digital sector at a national level, and they also include several clear and implementable recommendations. Partnerships such as the Equals EU Group promote gender equity in social innovation by drawing on the expertise of 19 organizations from 15 EU member states and associated countries. Looking back at my personal journey in the field of ICTs, I started off as a young girl intrigued by science, and then I became a young professional enthusiast about technology policy, and I'm now the first woman to ever hold a top elected management position in the UN Agency for Digital Technologies, the ITU. If I could give my 10-year-old self a piece of advice, I would say explore, question, discover, and find ways you can make an impact. Seize the moment to go after that which inspires you, and don't hold yourself back. Think about what technology could do for you and for the world. I hope you will join us in more 10th anniversary celebrations by visiting ITU's Girls in ICT webpage and following us at hashtag Girls in ICT on social media. You will find information on events such as the 10 moments of Girls in ICT and plenty of activities and events to join. After this European celebration of Girls in ICT, I invite you to take part in the Global Celebration event later today. Thank you and have a wonderful Girls in ICT Day. Thank you very much. After this inspiring video, I would like to take a moment to highlight that this event is indeed a significant milestone of the ITU's Girls in ICT Day, which started in 2011 and has now seen over 377,000 girls and young women taking part in more than 11,400 International Girls in ICT's Day celebrations in 171 countries. I'm very proud also to announce that also today, the all countries of the Europe region are committed to support this movement and you will see on the global map so many events happening today. Governments, national ICT regulatory authorities, ICT companies, academic institutions, UN agencies and NGOs across Europe have all joined this movement and have celebrated this day throughout Europe over the last years. Today, I'm also delighted to see so many young European girls representing their countries proudly and delivering very important messages to all of us. With regards to their hopes and wishes for their future education and careers in science, technology, engineering, arts and math, as a father of two daughters myself, who are very curious when it comes to the technology and science, I'm a true believer that girls can do anything they put their mind to. I'm very much looking forward to hear that the girls that have joined us today from as young as 11 years old have to say. It's my pleasure to see so many incredible and courageous young girls take center stage. At the ITU office for Europe, gender takes center stage and we are continuously working with our member states to ensure that the gender is taken into consideration at every national strategy ideation and implementation. We could not have arrived today at this event alone. I'm delighted to be joined and to join the forces in the organization of this event with our partner equals EU represented by Anthony Aguino, who is doing an incredible job in this area. We could not have done this event also without our support of the Regional Cooperation Council represented by Maya Angiska, head of the program department, also by the regional director of the UN Women for Europe and Central Asia. Welcome to this event, as well as the CPT represented by the co-presidents of this regional organization, Ms. Christiana Flutur and representatives of the network of women for Europe. Also today, we are joined by the ITU Generation Connects Europe youth group represented today by Andrea Bargo and the Development Goals Forum represented by Hamzika and Pramkoum, CEO of this forum. We are also will be pleased to hear some special words over the greetings from Commissioner Gabriel, who could not join us today but send a special greetings to the whole community. Without further ado, I would like to give the floor to Dr. Anthony Aguino-Mis, a social entrepreneur, advocate and researcher at the Oslo Met and Leeds at the Equals EU, the flagship project at the European level, advancing innovation and promoting the gender equality. Anthony, you have the floor. Thank you so much, Oslo. I just I can't tell you how excited I am to be here today. I have been looking forward to this event all week and I think we've been preparing for months. So this opportunity is kind of the culmination not only of a lot of hard work in the more recently but something that I have had a passion for for many years. I went to a technical high school and I studied electronics. So I was doing a lot of work in the lab and I played around with circuit boards and everything else you could imagine. There was probably one, maybe two girls in the entire class and like many high schools, the girls and the boys pretty much stuck to themselves. If I could do it all over again, I would tell myself, stick with the girls. Their grades were better, they treated each other nicely and they learned a lot more than I did. After high school, I went to work at an electronics company and there I met a woman named Barbara. She was the only one at the whole company who could put together a circuit board after our machine, our automated machine had completely destroyed it. And if I could do it over again, I would tell her how awesome I thought she was for being able to do that. Later on, I went to college and at my university, they made me take a modern drama class and I thought this was completely silly because I wasn't there to study drama. In that class, my teacher made us read a play called A Doll's House. This is by the Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen. The whole play is about a woman's oppression in her own home. That play completely changed my view of my mom and all of the women in my family. If I could do it over again, I would tell my teacher that she had changed my life. Today, I have the privilege to lead a grassroots advocacy project focused on women in innovation. And we've recently launched a newsletter which means you have the opportunity to learn more about how we can create a more gender inclusive world and especially how we can involve women and girls in innovation. I would encourage everyone to please sign up now. The QR code is on the screen. Just grab your phone and take a picture of that and you can enroll in our newsletter. Now, I'm very honored and privileged to be able to announce that we have a video from a very special person, Maria Gabriel. She is the EU Commissioner on Innovation, Research, Culture, Education and Youth, a phenomenal human being. So I would love if we could play that video now. Your talent, your potential and your leadership. Dear friends, today we celebrate the International Day of Women and Girls in Science. Knowledge, skills and talent, know no borders and gender. Let me first extend my warm congratulations to all of you successfully pursuing a study or a career in science. Europe needs your creativity and entrepreneurial potential. In Europe, 41% of scientists and engineers are women. It is clear that without its talented and innovative women, Europe cannot and will not move forward. Although we have reached 48% of female PhD graduates in Europe, women make up only 33% of researchers and 22% of the heads of higher education institutions in Europe. There are of course differences among countries, yet on the average women make up 17% of tech sector jobs. Therefore, we need to encourage women to develop skills in science, technology, engineering so we can finally take advantage of all our talent and diversity. In fact, we all know brilliant women scientists, but they still deserve more visibility and firmly believe that we need more women role models to inspire others to follow them. This is why I launched the EU Women for Future campaign last year to celebrate and showcase Europe's talented women. We have also the European Prize for Women Innovators, which awards the most innovative women researchers and raises awareness of the need for more women entrepreneurs. Within our initiatives, the European Research Area and the European Education Area, we aim to build a pipeline for female innovation talents starting with schoolgirls throughout education and early stages of career. The pandemic has clearly demonstrated the critical role of women researchers in different stages of the fight against COVID-19, from advancing the knowledge on the virus to developing techniques for testing and finally to creating the vaccine against the virus. Now we must ensure women continue playing their key role, leading the way out of the crisis. Girls and women in Europe, we need your ideas, your talent, your potential. I would like to call upon all of you, smart and strong women of Europe, let's stay united to unlock the full potential of women for leading Europe towards a green, digital, healthy and resilient future. Let's transform the international day of women and girls in science in everyday example of your talent, your potential, and your leadership. I want to highlight something there that Commissioner Gabriel said that's so critically important. This issue of talent, the tech sector in Europe needs more talented people in those jobs to help solve our critical challenges in society and we cannot afford to leave out or exclude 50% of the population. So this issue is critical to our development as a society. Now I get to turn to my favorite part and that is the main event. We have so many wonderful young people here today to talk about their experiences in working with this issue and so we're going to kick off in Norway and we have a wonderful young woman there, Andrea Lingholm, who is going to introduce herself and the work that she's work doing. Hi, my name is Andrea Lingholm. I'm six years old and from Svenger, which is a city in Norway. I'm finishing sophomore year this summer and we started junior year in August 2021. I'm not yet decided what to study in the university but to make sure that I can study anything I want after the next years in high school, I have chosen to include math and science in my own school degree. Through media school and parents, I am aware that the proportion of girls choosing a technical career is too low and the girls are encouraged to choose a technical career like STEM and ICT. In Norway, I feel that I as a girl can study anything I like as long as my grades are good enough. So the system is not stopping me from choosing a technological career but more the opposite actually. As I've registered that universities are encouraging girls in particular to apply for a place to study at their university. So what is the reason for us girls not to seize the chance? I of course not have the full answer but I think maybe part of the reason is the way we are raised. From the age of zero, girls are given toys to play with that are more feminine compared to the toys boys are given. So most girls get dolls and most boys get cars. Growing up, I also registered that it's more easy and natural for my mom to ask me to help her in the kitchen and household than to ask my brother. While for my father, it's much more easy to ask my brother come help him out in the garden compared to ask me. And this way, our parents without realizing it are preparing my brother for a more masterly career compared to me. Having that said, my mom is an engineer so in one way she is a role model to me. At least that's what she likes to believe. When she was to choose a career in her youth, her mother and my grandmother strongly encouraged her to choose a technical career and to become an engineer as your dad and avoid careers normally picked by women. This is a recommendation both she and my father have passed on to me as something I will consider when the time comes for me to choose. The last thing we're going to say is the advice that I would give my 10-year-old self. I would say be kind to everyone and do what makes you happy and what you're passionate about regardless of what others say, believe or think and try not to care as much about what others think of you. Thank you for listening. Thank you, Andrea. Those were amazing words. I really appreciate you coming today. Let's turn now to the Netherlands. We have a wonderful young woman there, Daphne Stevens. Daphne, could you please tell us your experiences? Yes, hello. My name is Daphne Stevens. I'm 22 years old and I'm from the Netherlands. I am currently pursuing my studies in law but it's very strongly linked to technology. I namely took a lot of science courses in high school and I absolutely loved it. But I never really received any support to pursue this in my further studies. It was more often said to me, your math skills aren't that good so you shouldn't really do something technical. So I decided to study law instead. But on the day I graduated from high school my professors came up to me and they said, why are you not doing something technical? Because I would definitely be your thing. But I had already enrolled in my law course so I decided to pursue that and just see where it would end up. In those times during my bachelors I really missed learning about science and I still learned a lot about science in my free time because I just really enjoyed it. And then I went on exchange to Ireland where I learned about the intersection between law and technology. For example through cybercrime and data protection and all that. And that's what really piqued my interest because I could follow my two biggest passions which is both law and science and technology. So I started studying law and technology where I focused on personal data and cybercrime and disinformation and I felt right back at home to be surrounded with all the techies to say it like that. I also became active in the field of internet governance. For example here through the ITU and through the IGF. And now I'm graduating soon and I'm very actively looking for jobs that are tech related. So even though I took a small detour and even though people told me that it may be very difficult for me to follow a tech related course, I still end up where I plan to end up in the beginning. And that also links to my advice to my 10-year-old self. It is namely don't listen to the people when they say that something is impossible but instead just prove them wrong. That's what I've been doing over the past few years and it really brought me to where I am today. So that's the piece of advice I would bring to my 10-year-old self and also to you all. Thank you so much. Thank you Daphne. That is phenomenal. And if anybody needs a young, talented expert in law and technology please check Daphne out. All right let's go now to Latvia. We have a wonderful young woman there, Elisa Gulb. Elisa, could we please hear from you? Hi, dear girls, my name is Elisa Gulb and I am first-year computer science student at Riga Business School. Today I want to share my story and encourage other girls from all across Europe to become a part of ICT community. If you look around in your room you will probably see many different technologies all around you. And now in times of pandemic the life without technologies seems unbelievable as technologies now is the only tool how we can still connect across the world and keep ourselves safe. But have you ever considered being not only the user but inventor of technologies? For me it all began at eighth grade. We had the subject programming and at first I had a really bad gut feeling about it because I had really many different stereotypes in my head and I thought that it would be terrible and it was. It was terrible. I completely hated it and having had this bad experience mainly because of the incompetence of teacher totally blocked the idea of me ever joining ICT community. Although ICT doesn't only involve being a programmer as there's many different positions like project manager, website designer and many others that involve not only hard skills like programming but rather soft skills like creativity, leadership and many others. As I told previously my first interaction with ICT was rather unpleasant. However as the years passed by I started to hear more and more about the Latin ICT community the opportunities it can give and how technologies can change the life of others. I saw that more and more girls are joining the ICT community and I got really inspired by that. So I started reconsidering my previous experience and tried it again. I just applied to free online courses that are related to technology just to try it again but now with my own learning pace. And having given the second chance to myself I understood that I actually really like technologies and I love programming so I decided to apply to Riga Business School which is a unique program that combines technology and business skills. And now I can say that it was one of my best decisions ever made. The beauty of ICT technologies is that they can be applied almost anywhere. For example I really care about education like in many countries in Latvia students who live in ruler areas have less opportunities in terms of education. And as I originally come from a country side myself the accessibility of proper education is really important to me. Therefore I started to look how with the help of technologies can I conquer this problem. And now I work on a project in cooperation with Ministry of Education and Telecommunication operators in Latvia to improve internet connection all across all across the Latvian schools. And for me it feels amazing that with the help of technologies I can help pupils across my country to have a proper internet access at their school and expand the limits of classroom. And from this follows my advice to my 10 year old self. If I would meet my 10 year old self again I would say just keep learning and believe in yourself because amazing opportunities are waiting for you. Thank you. Lisa what a what an incredible story of resilience. I absolutely love it. You're inspiring. Let's turn now to Poland. We are slowly filling in the map. We have Marta Moushidowska. I am probably butchering your name Marta so I'll have to apologize. No worries. Everyone does it so don't worry really. So hello everyone. My name is Marta Moushidowska and first of all many thanks for having me here in such a high level panel today. So in the halfway of my law studies because I study law I struggled with the feeling of not fitting in the standard career path going to work in a law fair or corporation right after graduation and stuff like that. I have always been drawn to work in international organizations trying to fit the law into the changing reality. So when I started to be interested in new technologies particularly when we started to create you of Internet you of Internet Governance Forum Poland as well as when I joined women in AI organization last year in the end of last year. Subsequent events were like domino like participation in one organization filled another. I joined ITO for one project for example. I started to meet more and more people with similar interests to mine until one day suddenly I received a phone call from one Polish newspaper that they would like me to write about new technologies by women for women. So although I as I mentioned my adventure with ICT started relatively recently I still remember that I was surprised how many women are actually involved in the ICT and new technologies industry. What is more I really think that for now I met more women than men and I think it's genuinely beautiful how we support each other. As I said we have many organizations and events to share our experience help each other collaborate to make new amazing projects. I'm very thankful to them for inspiring me every day to keep pursuing my dreams. So as we have 10th anniversary today I was really for this past week I was really thinking about my 10 year old self and what I would say to her to young Marta so I would definitely say keep your head up and let your intuition guide you because it's always the most important. Thank you so much. Thank you Marta I love hearing how all of your opportunities kind of just fell like dominoes it's beautiful. Let's turn now to Denmark we're continuing to fill in this map we have a young woman Mia Cass and we would love to hear from her. So hi my name is Mia Cass I'm 19 and I live in Denmark and I'd just like to give a quick thanks to all the amazing women who have spoken before me they're all so lovely. So I guess as someone who was from a very privileged life and a very privileged country my views on girls and women in science has always been fairly positive it wasn't really something that I thought too much about and personally never saw a problem in this field but after joining the ITU and becoming a part of Generation Connect it became apparent to me how important this issue was. This was something that we kept coming back to again and again and it kept surprising me how relevant it was. I was a part of the cyber security group so it wasn't something that I initially thought of but it just occurred to me there how vital it was to have women in science's, steams, the ICT everything. It was a really eye-opening and important experience for me to hear all these other girls and their hardships and in the end it was something that was really heavily focused on throughout our entire final product and I also got to meet some amazing women and girls who I now truly believe are making a difference in this field right now and I guess throughout this entire experience it got me to look back on my life and everything that I've been through and I was someone who was really interested in science and math at a very young age and it was something that I chose those classes when I was very young of course but I ended up in a class with three other girls and 12 boys and it was just something that naturally turned us into a target so I guess if I could go back to my 10-year-old self who over the next coming years would slowly deter away from that field just out of fear I would grab it by the shoulders and I would say don't listen to the people around you because this is honestly something that you truly love and in the end that's all that matters is sticking to the stuff that you love. Yeah that is such a story of bravery and perseverance I'm just really grateful to hear those words. Thank you so much Mia. Now we're going to turn to a very special guest Maya Hanjuska. She is the head of program of the program department for the Regional Cooperation Council. Maya we are all looking very much forward to hearing you speak. Thank you very much and thank you for the opportunity to encourage and empower more girls and women in ICT but also to be inspired by the passion and drive for all our fellow speakers and actually the positive messages with an act upon our and we are just few days after we in the Regional Cooperation the network of women in STEM in the western Balkans to promote girls and women's inclusion in STEM education and careers as part of a broader women economic empowerment initiative and actually what propelled us to take this agenda so resolutely well according to the Balkan Barometer survey that we are running every year four times more business owners would prefer to hire men than women and our observatory on employment also painted a rather bleak picture actually men outnumber women in the region labor force for more than one million and that is why we truly believe that this initiative on empowering young women to enter STEM education and career comes at a decisive moment especially considering the economic difficulties that the entire region is facing amidst the COVID-19 crisis. Now our western Balkan region has been lacking vocal girls and women as role models but this is only until now actually our network members and the girls and the women we are honored actually to be joined with here today at this important celebration are all outstanding girls and women in STEM and ICT who succeeded despite all odds and branded themselves as a regional or global European champion so it's an advice to my younger self or to my younger daughter for that matter it is my pleasure to echo and to amplify some of the key messages by the extraordinary girls and women STEM network members so really the credit goes to all of them the first message will be competence but also confidence no fear of failure and you can do this attitude it's actually the remarkable women around the region kept pursuing their goals and passions despite the social obstacles and very often the dominant male cultures. The second one is inspire but be inspired by others promote the successful girls and women as role models that young women can relate identify and really encourage their increased participation in STEM fields and actually promoting it is very important like we are all doing today to use real life testimonials and be at the platforms that the youth is another very important advice is to be someone's bedrock and support framework there is a need for the creation of a mentoring and coaching programs for young girls and women entering STEM education careers but also very importantly switching to because this is also feasible doable switching to STEM careers but also climbing the ladder one there there because we are working just what is a rather sticky status quo and we are still woefully short and shy of parity so there is still a road ahead and of course another message is to share fun and good practices to motivate practitioners to introduce the similar tools a quick message not just to our younger selves but also to the policymakers to the academia to the companies walk the talk and don't just claim gender equality as the objective but really enforce it actively in every single recruitment every single enrollment and advancement and another important message that our network members reminded us and this is something that the commissioner also spoke about one shouldn't forget the bigger picture that all that we are today promoting and doing contributes towards the smarter greener digital and inclusive region and that the worm women's and girls power is innate and actually platforms and tools are needed to flourish so in closing I really hope that even today some personal story will inspire someone to pursue STEM or any other profession that enables your or our authentic selves to to try so the demand for ICT jobs will continue to expand alongside the employment opportunities and many of these jobs can be filled by competent and confident girls and women so girls and women are the greatest and that population to become the next generation of STEM professionals and the economic engines of our region so all here today have a role to play in terms of effect writing this potential so thank you very much for this thank you Maya I hear you and I see you and I just love this what you had as a message implementation mentorship these things are critical to moving the agenda forward and I sincerely appreciate you taking the time to to be here we're going to move now to Serbia and I'm so excited to hear from Melena Mishic Melena there you are let's hear from you please hello my name is Melena I'm 14 years old and I'm from Belgrade Serbia when people ask me why I'm a feminist I tell them it's because feminism means all genders having equal rights and opportunities it's all about leveling the playing field between genders and ensuring that diverse women and girls have the same opportunities in life available to poison them in the world of Maya Angelou of course I'm a feminist I'd be stupid not to be on my side women and men have been constantly fighting for women's rights since 1848 and the Seneca Falls movement but despite the remarkable efforts made by these feminists there is now one country in the world where women can express to have the same rights as men in Serbia the gender roles are far from equal but we are working on it we have a long tradition of great female leaders women in position of power heads of parliaments engineers architects painters and scientists but there is still a long way to go as Kamala Harris the first woman vice president in the U.S. said while I may be the first woman in this office I will not be the last because every little world watching tonight sees that this is a country of possibilities dream of ambition leading with conviction and see ourselves in the way that others may not simply because they've never seen it before I can't count the number of times that the boys in my class have tried to explain to subjects like math science technology physics and other ones that are related to the careers men dominated but as I was always better than all of them even in the subjects these scenarios will always end up and then asking me for help I always stood up for myself even as a child I will call them out unfortunately many girls don't do that either because they are too scared shy or just because they don't want to get into arguments we can learn so much from the powerful actions and inspiring words of women who came before us but also there is still so much work we have to do it's our duty to carry the on their work challenging and changing speaking for speaking up for equality lucky me my mother raised me to be a so-called angry feminist which is an awful way to say that I stand up for myself and I answer back not everyone had that privilege do you people around the world please become provost seeking further education opportunities always remember that you get in life but you have the courage to ask for I hope to be able to meet all of you in person sometimes big thank you to the organizations especially to the equals you and horizon 2020 project team that invited me to this great celebration it's really a privilege to be part of the small smart community celebrating with and learning from people with their hearts in the right place stay healthy and above brave a huge hug from Serbia thank you you thank you malena your your words are are moving I really sincerely appreciate hearing hearing from you and I am a feminist too so you can always count on me to have your back thank you malena that was phenomenal we want to go to Albania now we have a wonderful young woman aliona abdo aliona I see you the floor is yours hi I am eliona I'm delighted to be here today in this very important European celebration of girls in ICT I take this opportunity to thank the organizers for bringing us together to share our experiences and personal stories when I think about girls in ICT I know that some years ago maybe before I was born this was not mentioned anywhere there was just the part of the field ICT and it was always related to boys through the years three things are changing the patriarchal society is still current in my country Albania but things are changing every day for the better women are fighting for their rights and we see successful women everywhere doctors politicians stem related to students but also leaders and seos woman empowerment came in like a breath of fresh air we are more organized now we know our values and overcome our fears yesterday's dream is the daily reality is that all did we win of course not we have just started and I'm not talking only about Albania we live in a globalized world nowadays I'm talking about the whole world I see this in every meeting about woman empowerment I'm seeing it today we are all gathered to change the stereotypes and celebrate our empowerment and tell girls nothing can break us if we stand united as we are doing today I myself had had difficulties whenever I want the chance to study ICT as I thought I would be the only girl in the class and it scared me but I did it I finished the bachelor and master of science degree and now I consider myself as a successful ICT professional I'm happy to say we are creating a better future for our girls girls I am even more happy to know that when I have a daughter I will not have to stop her play football I shouldn't stop her to be an engineer and let her follow her dreams my mother was worried for me starting ICT but every and this day she told me how proud she was that I was doing what she couldn't I know I will be worried for my daughter too it's another thing but as I learned from my mother let your children follow their dreams make their own their own mistake and you will see how the world is going to change when talking about the changing the world I thought I should talk about the woman that have created the name the world the first woman for one field on another and I'm so proud for them all but now I will not talk about them today that's because I think the real heroes are the one who keep fighting every in this day with the inequality those who work in an office full of men and make them show respect decide the fact if they want to or not I'm talking about today about those women leaders that are making the world to rethink their perspective I'm talking about girls in every field of life but I must say girls in STEM related fields has changed the game I'm so proud for us and this is how this has to be celebrated every day happy 10 years and a lot more to go and please use technology to change the world as girls as women everywhere and for the message I would give to my town your old self is explore explore until you find yourself thank you thank you Eliona and you said that your mother is proud of you and I'm just proud to know you so this is wonderful it's so nice to hear your words we get to go to Bosnia and Herzegovina now which is going to be a really amazing presentation from Leila Omorovich Leila we can't wait to hear from you hello everyone thank you Anthony my name is Leila Omorovich I'm 19 years old first of all I want to wish you all an amazing girls in ICT day let's celebrate the power of knowledge and great ideas that women across the world have came up with I'm first year of computer science and I currently work on several IT projects in the past I developed a few mobile and web applications that are available to all of you but I have to say that once I was just a little girl trying to stand out with my own capabilities I used to have a lot of ideas and the world of opportunities for me became computers I decided to learn more about the world of zeros and ones on my own there were many times when I was the only girl in the class but it's not something that we should get used to that is why courage is the key of achieving anything you want we have to think about those who need to be encouraged boys and girls have the same rights so let's try to think about this every time we hear someone saying there are jobs that are not meant for girls or for boys we have a lot of examples of girls changing the world in fact you can become one of them as well there are change makers around us but if we're all gathered around positive ideas we can make a change now allow me to share a few messages on this important day if you're a young girl wanting to become a part of ICT don't be afraid we're all there for you your ideas matter because you're working hard on it there is going to be someone who's going to recognize that until then be brave and be you nothing can ever stop for you besides yourself if you're successful woman in ICT become mentor share your knowledge with girls and become a role model we need you so that we can dream about becoming that successful as you one day we don't need just another male role model because there are plenty of them and if you're a teacher teach us that there are no male or female jobs especially in ICT where all of us can be a powerful if you're one of these people great but also every individual can help because if you help only one girl in her career you never know maybe she's going to change hundreds of lives by the revolution of her knowledge and possibilities in ICT thank you all for listening and opportunity to be a part of this amazing event I just love what you had to say about fearlessness and bravery and I think there is such strength in this community of women and men who are really championing the role of women in technology and especially in girls in tech so thank you so much it's just beautiful to hear from you we get to go now to North Macedonia where we will hear from Fiona Manderova Fiona I see you let's hear from you um well hello to everyone I would like to introduce myself I'm Fiona from Macedonia at first I study at uh Mihaila Pupin in Skopje Macedonia and there are many sections but I choose uh electrical installator well that's a hard section but I thought like I play football that's hard and uh this is hard if I believe in myself and I would like to do that I'm going through everything and everyone were uh making pressure and telling me how you're a girl how could you do that and how it's going to be like when you grow up what are you going to work and I thought if I believe in myself and if I make many challenges to many challenges to myself I could do it and I challenge myself and like this section needs many practical work like climb on wooden poles it's hard to insulate it's um if you couldn't do it I don't know like there are many things in practical work like you have to um work on yourself to become installator but I thought I could graduate graduate and then go on faculty also to study more and uh if I would tell my 10 year old self it would go like do what you love and what you want don't listen to nobody because you're what you are don't try to break something for someone and thank you for the time and listen thank you Fiona I just love how you completely defied expectations in your life and you are able to overcome all these challenges and I see that you believe in yourself because you stand in your own truth and you're speaking truth to power so that's amazing we get to go now to Montenegro continuing to paint in this map of Europe with Nadia Stojanovic Nadia we will anxiously hear from you there you are hi my name is Nadia Stojanovic I'm 14 and I'm joined you from Montenegro my message to you today is find your passion and be ready to work hard for it usually little girls want and wish to be ballerinas or teacher then when they grow up grow up but when I was a child I want really to be ambassador of Montenegro in Italy probably because my mom loves Italy and I know that I needed to know Italian language however once we started learning Italian at school I was not really committed to learn it well but and I didn't not try hard I guess my destiny was not to be an ambassador or at least not the one in his politics a couple years later new subjects were added to our school like physics and chemistry at first I didn't understand these new subjects but eventually I developing a love for chemistry as my love for chemistry grew I started working harder and harder on understanding and developing my knowledge and abilities regarding this field and I realized that when you have passion for something it is not that hard to work to you also I realized that once I knocked on the door of chemistry serial doors opened and one of them is this conference we are attending today therefore one day I'm hoping to be a ambassador who will use knowledge in chemistry to help and connect people around the world and of course to achieve this dream I will need help from all of you because I will need ICT programs we all know the importance of technology nowadays it's hard to do anything without technology that's why you are very important to me as a futurist you knowledge is data sharing communication infrastructure telecommunication networks and broadcasting services can help all us future science in research and developing new ways of improving living and doing it in harmony with nature therefore be open to obtain knowledge in our field of technology learn and improve because maybe you may be a key player in the future of this planet thank you all I hope that we will meet again in meantime stay creative bye thank you Naja and I see how passionate you are for your field and it fills my heart with joy because I'm also passionate about my field and I never feel like I'm working I wake up every morning and I'm just I cannot wait to start the day we get now to I get to take a little bit of a break because I'm going to hand off the microphone and the control of the board to Homsika Homsika is a good friend and colleague of mine and she's an absolute rock star in her field so Homsika you take us forward hey hello thank you Anthony um and I'm just sitting here with so with goosebumps so many amazing girls and women here talking about very very important issues and I'm very excited to see you guys um in a very very important positions in the future so now we have a message from Alia El-Jassir she's the regional with director for Europe and Central Asia UN woman please Alia thank you Jaroslav all ITU colleagues involved in this event their partners including Maya and most of all perhaps the these inspiring young women who have spoken so far and who we're going to continue to listen to during this event um I take this opportunity to congratulate us all here on the 10-year anniversary of girls in ICT day um UN women also recently marked its 10-year birthdays so despite this difficult moment that we're experiencing because of COVID I think there's still a lot to celebrate and because of what we're experiencing in this moment we can say that information communication technologies perhaps are more critical now than ever before they're essential as we've heard to education to accessing services having decent work getting access to information maintaining social connections um and we can only make this century the century for women and girls by addressing the gender digital divide and we really need all actors in the ICT sector fully committed to this all and we did a joint study with ITU recently that you heard briefly about and we did that um looking at ICTs for women and girls across the region particularly in eight countries and the study reconfirmed that technology really is a game changer for women and girls and if you haven't been convinced by what you've heard from the young women themselves we hope that you can use this study in your advocacy and if this important resource which you know we have through ICT you're not inclusive and equal we will see many groups of young people particularly women and girls among them at risk of becoming even more excluded and discriminated against as many of you probably know last month was a super busy month for global action on gender equality and there was a huge focus on young people as agents for change and the Generation Equality Forum was held at the end of March in Mexico and it gathered young people civil society organizations private sector governments international organizations including the UN to discuss how we can accelerate action to achieve gender equality once and for all by 2030 the theme for this year for ice for girls in ICTs day talks about connected girls creating brighter futures and we really see the synergy here with what Generation Equality Initiative is all about in Mexico nearly half of all the participants and there were over 13,000 of them were under the age of 30 and this really does give me a lot of hope for the Generation Equality Initiative for gender equality and for building a brighter or more connected future we have only nine years left to achieve the ambitions of the 2030 agenda so if we were talking about accelerated action before COVID-19 I think we can all agree that we need it now more than ever because we're worried about even losing the gains that we've made so far young women leading tech technology and innovation was one of the key issues strongly voiced during the forum in Mexico and all along in the preparations there is an action coalition on innovation and technology for gender equality it's wonderful to see ITU and we also have UNICEF in the UN system taking a leadership role in this action coalition as well as key partners from the region including the governments of Finland and Armenia as well as Koch holding from Turkey leading on the private sector side at Mexico there was a blueprint for this action coalition as well as other action coalitions that was announced but maybe I can touch on some of the key actions and hopefully this can resonate with some of the what you've heard from the young women and give us ideas in terms of the kinds of commitments we want partners to make as part of generation quality to to have clear change happen transformative change happen by 2026 so that we can have a better chance of achieving the 2030 agenda so what we're talking about is reducing by half the gender digital divide across generation by accelerating meaningful access to technologies and digital literacy leaving no one behind increasing investments towards feminist technology and innovation by at least 50 percent to support women's leadership as innovators and better respond to women and girls most pressing needs solving the proportion of women working in tech and innovation by setting up networks and benchmarks to transform innovation ecosystem and very importantly implement policies and solutions against online and tech facilitated gender-based violence and discrimination against women the equals initiative which you and women is also part of builds such critical components of the efforts to date we know that the EU and EU member states have important leadership roles in other action coalitions under the generation equality initiative and now we need to continue this journey and we invite all of you to join us as partners and commitment makers to get ready for the second part of the forum which will happen in Paris at the end of June we have young people leading demands and leading the thinking about actions and I invite all of the young people here today to join the youth feed actions we need to join use this moment and mobilize because we have a once in a lifetime opportunity and I'm using today as a way to listen and learn from girls and young women in the region not only about your experiences but your insights your ideas the suggested solutions it will whatever got us to this point is not going to get us to where we want to go so we really need your voice and we need your actions if we have any chance of meeting the ambitious target so I really look forward to hearing more of you and just to end if I could go back and say something to my 10-year-old self and listening to you I would say this even to myself today especially as I hear the amazing things you have told us but also like if I think when I was 10 years old there wasn't even the concept of a personal computer or a mobile phone even when I was the age of some of you here today and I remember how excited we were by floppy disks and and you know like the concept of a web processing software and when I hear your positivity your intelligence and your incredible power I stand by what I would say I would say that the best is yet to come and the possibilities are endless if the responsibility of myself and others like me in these organizations to continue to chip away and remove those barriers and those discriminations that would otherwise deprive the world of the untapped potential of amazing young women and girls like yourself all over the world thank you so much amazing thank you thank you alia and I'm sure it was a great inspiration to to hear from you from the union woman and I'm sure these girls will do a great job towards achieving or working towards the agenda 2030 so we are moving now to Moldova we have an amazing woman Alexandra Perano yes hello everyone my name is Alexandra Serano and I'm a high school student let's imagine for a second that you are going back in time and there is no technology what would you do you will definitely start looking for an idea to create something new and useful for people no matter the gender age race or nationality you have to be motivated believe in yourself and not give up if we refer to girls in STEM education they can really build confidence in themselves and have the trust that that their ideas can solve the torneous problem as girls participation in ICT activities can expand their access to job in high growth companies and all life domains as a young lady and participant at the girls go it program organized by you and woman in Moldova founded by Sweden represented me a strong reconformation that ITC field is my future I could say that just like in any other field you have to be perseverant you may need to start your own learning path acquiring step by step the many languages used in web development like html css javascript afterwards you have to apply the knowledge to create interactive websites aiming at solving community problems for a platform that teaches you about their human rights as I did I started to apply my knowledge with more confidence one of my achievements that I'm proud of is the website that I have developed for monitoring the health status of people with breathing difficulties this website consists of more categories one of them is the diagrams that indicate the value of humidity temperature and gas one important issue that must be taken into consideration is that this kind of activity requires some steps to be followed personal attitude exploration exploration that means to analyze and to find a purpose and try to predict the final result ICT activities made it possible for me and for my years to express the reality of the century and if I were to give a piece of advice to my 10 year old self I would recommend to try what makes her hurt vibe to not be afraid of taking risks and have the trust that with ambition perseverance and whiteness you'll create anything to set out to there are no limits that only set by your mind from the republic of Moldova I wish you all a great girl city nice day amazing thank you so much Alexandra and thank you for your genuine message and speech to to all of us and then we're moving to Ukraine we have Maria Colistik Maria please hi thank you for the invitation my name is Maria Colistik I'm from Ukraine my experience suggests being always positive smiling open to the new adventures it will be good to travel speak foreign languages and discover world cultures especially it will expect a lot of time at the ocean in parks forests and biological reserves of course we might acquire knowledge on distance learning there are five unsasic waves of changes person global economy physical environment skills and steam the major test that will impact on business and governments into hydrate certain all over the world are the trends related to opportunities of the concrete person global economy and physical environment to keep up with the changes it is necessary to acquire a new professional and personal skills namely adaptive thinking intercultural competence ability to use new media and effectively work remotely in addition it is important to have knowledge from outside your specialization try to do something that is unusual for you it is at the intersection of disciplines where startups and the most interesting ideas emerge be yourself and improve your it skills Susan walczycki is the CEO of youtube said there is nothing impossible in the world thank you for your attention best regards from green thank you thank you so much mariana and then we are moving to turkey we have selenor satir selenor come on everybody first of all i'd like to introduce myself briefly my name is selenor chagre i'm from turkey i'm 13 years old i don't have any plans about future but because i'm too on too young for thinking this but my elder sister is studying industrial engineering and in our department there are not many girls she's a lucky girl because our mom is computer engineering and she's leading r&d and r&d and technology group in a well some which is a famous technology company in turkey when my sister was a child my mother and her friends were always role models for her perhaps that was the main reason why she chose the engineering profession mom always supports my sister but most out most of the other families don't show such support in the world there are so many problems about gender equality and we can see these problems in technology field too society has an important role about choosing a career for example one of my girlfriend wanted to attend a robotic class but she was the only girl girl in the class for that reason she didn't want to attend class again but but the robotic class teacher and her family supported her on attending the class then she inspired other girls about learning robotics families have an important role about choosing a career too many families provide tablets, cell phones, computers for their sons at early ages but they don't do it for girls therefore boys meets technology before girls society family and teachers have a great influence on the choice of profession why girls don't choose ict career there are two basic questions when choosing a career one is can i do that and the second one is do i want to do this if girls think sdem is difficult due to social bias and is more suitable for boys then they're more skeptical than boys when choosing sdem career path the lower self concept is also reinforced and even created by parents society and teachers external values such as tradition and culture stereotypes and the lack of role models in this sector is another reason why there are least women compared to men in this field to encourage is to encourage more girls to consider working the ict sector for careers in the future it is necessary to introduce successful women who will be role models for them these role models can be creating a society where women and men girls and boys are equal right the diversity is a cognized access to the economy and society and where women have equal opportunities to participate and treat in society that's all thank you very much for your time and participation and thanks for the opportunity to give in to me thank you for the leader and thank you for pointing the importance parents and the teachers and academia has to do in this important process and then we have a message from christiana flair she's the co-president of c e p t and representative of network of woman for europe so please christiana thank you very much i hope you can hear me well uh it's uh it's really such a pleasure to be with you today and to celebrate the 10 years of the girls in ict project which is very dear to to my heart i want to say to you that i started my day by asking my colleagues especially the female colleagues what would would they say to you or what would they like to hear from this discussion it was very interesting and every one of them like all of you have brought their own experience to to uh their answers and i think it's it's amazing when we all have our minds and our hearts aligned okay so i started thinking where was i 10 years ago when girls in ict started well i was just starting my career in this field and of course i encountered all of the challenges all the all of the stereotypes that you can encounter but somehow i uh i i was strong and i stood up for myself uh i was the perseverance and i continued to do the work how i did that i asked myself do i find myself in this field yes i did find myself in this field what what is the impact of uh my work in the field and if i found uh i found the right answers i continued so i think it's so important to have this conversation with yourself and i keep having it since 10 years ago at every step whenever i have an important decision to make or whenever i have to decide on my career path whenever there is an intersection and you need to choose which path you go through you have this conversation with yourself you ask yourself what is the impact of the work what the impact is on your personal life because it's very important for us i think also that our values and our principles have to be aligned with what we do especially for us women it's very important to do that um so after i started i i as i said i followed many steps and now i find myself being the first chairwoman of the committee for itu policies in the cpt um i got here uh also with the help of an encouragement of my colleagues both the experienced colleagues and the ones that were very young like me and very enthusiastic but came with an open heart and open mind so it's very important to have a network of people and to support each other it was he for me actually so i think this is how i'm i'm starting to pay it forward so uh we in europe started this network of women in in ict together uh with the itu and the cpt and i think it it will be a good way to discuss and to start breaking the stereotypes and to encounter i don't know the so the the challenges to to break them um also when i think about the 10 years my colleagues were saying today to me that um we need to keep the um way a 10 year old child looks at things they're curious but they're also courageous also they are very um hungry for knowledge so they take in all the information so we let's look at this program as a as a 10 year old child and let's continue to have this spirit and if i look back to my 10 year old self i would just say to uh continue to be strong and to follow the education path because it's so important uh if we are encouraged with with the opportunities to follow um education paths uh in stem i loved math uh and science since i was little and i had encouragement from the families and i i i think everybody says that the family is very important so even if we think our family supported us we need to as i said pay it forward and continue to support our families but also let's consider us a family for for women in uh in tech thank you very much thank you thank you christiana for your extremely inspiring story and i'm i'm sure it motivates a lot of the the young woman listening to you thank you so much it's great to see the map turning more and more blue so we are now moving forward to germany we have nellie head big correspond hello nellie yes thank you hamsika my name is nellie hostman as you introduced me i am 23 years old and i was born and raised in germany and i'd like to say that it's my great honor to speak up on the international girls in ict day as a representative from germany especially with all these amazing girls present today so a little bit about me i'm a fifth year medical student and for the next year at least i will be working in a surgical research laboratory in cologne my kind of hometown on pursuing my medical doctor's thesis my dream job finally would be working as a surgeon someday while also continuing to do research as a clinician scientist that being said i would like to share some of my like sorry some of the challenges waiting and the experiences i have gathered as a girl working in stems so as you all might already know surgery is kind of a tough section to work in as a female physician long working hours unpredictable shifts and physical strain make it very hard to grant a good work-life balance for surgeons typically women who want to combine a family and a career often have to face gender stereotypes and disadvantages consequently people working as surgeons especially in the higher positions are male in 72 percent of all the cases this leads of course to a rather intimidating work environment for young female medical students i have been able to generate some personal experience as a female medical student because i have assisted in the operation room during some internships for example i have been approached unprofessionally by male colleagues and i had to endure negative comments regarding my gender whenever i did something wrong these are situations that happen in every hospital probably everywhere in the whole world and feeling the need to ignore these comments as they come from your supervisors is a serious part of the problem i felt felt unable to contradict my supervisors because i fear training disadvantages or even more negative comments all in all it seems to be a vicious circle because gender inequality and sexism at work can't be stopped easily in my opinion the change has to start in the minds of people and i won't be satisfied until this has happened accepting female colleagues is equals acknowledging the difficulties women face in male dominated careers and treating all co-workers with respect support and consideration will create a pleasant work environment attractive for young surgeons tackling this change by setting an example is one challenge i have on my agenda once i finish my studies and start to work i'm assured it is a long way with many sacrifices but i won't let this have an impact on my choice of career in contrast i will keep myself inspired by the many successful female surgeons who made their way through this male dominated area without being intimidated to round it up one advice i would give to my 10 year old self never let anyone define your limits or goals i hope my short intervention was encouraging for girls who wish to study stems contribute to healthcare or work in information and communication technologies i'm confident we can really make a change together thank you for the attention amazing thank you thank you so much nellie and i'm sure you'll be a great medical doctor i'm looking forward to follow your journey as well and then we're moving to france we have eve delportin hi hello my name is eve delport i am 15 years old i am from france and if i attend to this meeting today it's because i think that girls and boys should have the same access to science and technologies for me it's logical that girls and boys have the same access and education to science and technologies because i had the chance to grow up in a family where i'm offered the possibility of choosing myself what i want to do later and where i have the same educations and boys for example in my school we have the chance to have a lot of computers and a lot of activities around sciences also a lot of science and technologies as cool come to present the school to us the teachers of my school encourage us to turn to go towards sciences education whether we are girls or boys unfortunately not all the girls have the of this chance i would like that this change in the future and it's up to all of us to make this change for this we girls must take our future in hand plus girls who have the chance to have access to this education succeed as much as the boys in science and technologies girls have the same ability to learn than boys and the same desire to learn that's why i think that we should all have the same access to this education and that this stereotype about girls who aren't made for science and technology should be abolished as i have the chance to access education in science and technology i would like that all the girls have also the chance when i grow up i would be a graphic designer it's always interesting me and i like the fact that we can use uh two fields like art and technology to communicate graphic design touch upon a lot of things there is graphic design everywhere in the poster on the street on social media on tv and that's why i think i think it's very important and interesting to communicate with this and maybe one day i will use it to communicate for girls white if i could give an advice to my 10 years old self it will be to always keep your head up and never let someone say mean thing to you or said that i can do something because i'm a girl thank you for listening and happy girls in a city day thank you thank you even and it's very interesting field with art and technology so good luck good luck with an interesting field um so we're moving to spain now and we have noria suns noria suns hi hi hi i am noria suns from spain and firstly i would like to thank everyone responsible for giving me this opportunity to be able to speak on behalf of girls who are pushing or want to proceed a career on an ISD field i've noticed in the recent years that more and more girls are getting interested in this sector it's time goes by and that's five very hard to accomplish their goals these are incredibly good news many of them have great ideas are very creative and will surely make a change somewhere in the future in fact in my high school out of 23 students in my physics course five of them we are girls this has been one of the years with most girls in the course but not only a school but also at extracurricular activities this is a real tendons that i've noticed ever since i was a kid i participated in different technology activities like video game programming and i always remember being either alone or hiding behind my brother during the first days girls were clearly a minority i eventually of course stopped hiding behind my brother it didn't so and did some socializing and my friends turned out mostly to be to be mainly boys of course there were girls and as we were in minority we tend to stick together now when i visit my school's technology centered extracurricular activities i noticed that there are more or less the same amount of boys and girls to see that the numbers are increasing bit by bit makes not only me happy but also the teachers and everyone involved the world is becoming increasingly more and more technology centered and young girls in our generation and the upcoming ones will live in a world that will be supported by this technology therefore girls should have to place in that future but to be able to speak about the future or even the present we need to remember the past in a discipline where the major is a prominent one sending out as a woman requires an extra effort especially in the last century many great scientific women have done incredible advances of which we have the privilege nowadays of using in our present there are countless women that have had a hand in the fate of the future which has become now our present and not only did they fight for their goals but also to be recognized and we have valued as any other male scientist they have already paved the way and we just need to work on it and to have a beautiful journey with advancement development innovation and a new bright future however there are so many countries all over the world where girls either do not or cannot have access to these STEM programs there usually resides on the fact that girls are sadly so considered in some places as not capable of doing a what is considered a male job those of us who can we should stand up and use our voice for those who cannot do anything but to stay silent if i look back on my 10-year-old self i noticed that self-confidence and getting as many opportunities as possible is very important to achieve your goals it is our time to work for that what we love and make things work out for us all but working hard and pursuing a change those will surely get there by the future someday in the future thank you wow thank you thank you so much Nuriya and thank you for addressing the situation in the world today for for many many many girls and and thank you so much for letting me host some of this part and then i will give it back to Dr Anthony. Thank you Homsika this is so exciting to hear from so many young women when we were organizing this event it was kind of a well we know this is a good idea but we don't we can't quite see the power at least not you know feel the power of these voices like we have today and i've been emotionally moved throughout the day and all the panelists are sitting in chat telling each other how amazing it is to hear each of our each of their stories so i just want to emphasize how important it is for us to hear their voices and to hear these young women from all over europe talk about their experiences i want to let you guys know there's a really special part of this event that's coming up at the end of our time we are going to have a highlight reel of our campaign advice for my 10-year-old self so it's going to be a really really cool video that we get to watch together and i think it's something we can all share and a little bit of laughter and a little bit of joy together we get now to hear from a very special woman andrea barbu she is leading the generation connect group which is the earth youth or europe youth group at the international telecommunications union andrea it's so nice to see you and we can't wait to hear from you greeting us team members of itu fellow participants and friends on the occasion of the european celebration of girls in ict 10th anniversary i wish to congratulate you and offer my sincere thanks to the promoters of women studying and working in stem fields this last decade has seen a shift in paradigm from the male dominated industries to a women inclusive environment in the generation connect youth groups girls have had the chance to communicate to the itu the challenges opportunities and actions they wish to see in order to have a world which is supportive towards girls enrolling in stem programs at the generation connect meetings in december january with young women from all over europe we have agreed on asking for enough universities to educate us on equal chances at a constant legal support at the workplace and to be taken seriously when we are voicing our opinion the generation connect strategy has enabled us to present our experience from over 15 european countries and to represent women from back home in an international space where cooperation has produced the youth declaration we discussed about capacity development cyber security environment digital inclusion and so much more we discussed about how women can get involved how they can be protected and encouraged to act i invite you to read it online just google itu youth declaration and access it with your joint efforts for forward thinking governments and well planned projects by ogm or ngo's and corporations women have found more jobs available to them sadly when looking at the statistics this is more to be done there's more more to be done over the next decade to ensure that the progress is not lost and that women will be better represented in sdeam fields and others for that matter beginning with education offered to girls policies regarding educational strategies need to be enforced towards an early introduction of the use and programming of a machine to children be it girls and boys alike with an advertisement of all jobs the industries have to offer in the east side of europe there is a clear lack of trained professionals to tutor such children few cities with universities offer programs for engineering mathematics it and so on the scarcity of programs with qualified professors cause the brain drain of such countries the overcrowding of cities and the ever-growing gap between rural and the cities the harsh competition of future graduates of such fields may be intimidating and discourage girls from applying the amazing potentials these girls have is the world's chance to a balanced workforce but girls are frightened by the competitions and may sometimes give up so i encourage you not to give up this potential should it be lost the equilibrium of the world will never be reached girls freedom to choose their field of study to reeducate risk specialize to progress is the world's chance to solve the pains of starvation poverty malady and corruption the challenges the world has right now is all revolving around women we need to uplift women girls have been faced with a history of over 2000 years of being denied rights education and jobs when history seems so much powerful a little girl wishing to study engineering may seem hard to conquer and she may never see the light of day however expanding the horizon has no limits jobs are open in companies for women with STEM knowledge universities have their doors open for international women online platforms offer courses and millions of books on self-study so i want you girls to take any opportunity you find and go with it today's a cute challenge is that women who pass a certain age cannot change fields should they wish from a humanities centric to a mathematics field they are regarded as old and unproductive with the mind that has an expiration date and that is not true women whatever age they have they should be allowed to change their jobs success stories are all over the work from emilia airheart to anna kanjan the first woman to receive a bachelor science degree magic in engineering from columbia university to modern day dona strickland and sunita williams but women don't need any success stories we need to be appreciated for our talent we need to be encouraged for our future and supported in our endeavors i would advise my 10 year old self to focus on every subject in school to become a jack of all trades because complex minds are those who find solutions see connections and have a world of opportunity in front of them thank you so much thank you so much andrea and i just think what you you mentioned about appreciating somebody's talent is so critical for helping women move forward because so often their talents are just unrecognized they're just ignored and what we need is just to simply look at them and say yes you're doing a great job what you're doing is awesome andrea what you're doing is awesome and i really you are doing with us today moderating us it's absolutely awesome and thank you for being a man in our girls in a girl's world right now thank you it's my privilege it's absolutely an honor we get now to go to the united kingdom we are continuing to color in this beautiful map and we have a very special girl here mira and mira is the youngest young woman who is here today to speak to us so i think we all owe her our attention and our engagement thank you hello my name is maira agarwal and i am from the united kingdom i'm a year six student at northland inclusive school and i'm 11 years old i'm very happy to be making this speech at this 10th anniversary event but to be honest i'm a little nervous being the youngest speaker so here are my thoughts on steam at my school there are lots of different ways in which we learn about steam as well as studying science maths and art normal lessons we have design and technology days a steam club and sometimes we have steam themed events at steam club we made marvel shoots to learn about gravity i think i most enjoy steam when it's hands-on and involves a practical activity as an engineering challenge as part of a team i had to design build and test the model aeroplane mine was called this barrow we had to think about the aerodynamics what materials to use and the wing structure it was a lot of fun firing them down the school corridors i will be starting senior school next year and can't wait for the new exciting steam opportunities my teacher has told me about a chemistry lesson using metals to explode in water technology is rapidly changing the world around us how much have phones developed it seems like apple releases a new phone every six months i personally have an iphone whereas my parents definitely did not have a phone at my age when they finally did get a mobile phone they were more like bricks with antennas only capable of making calls sending texts and a pretty basic game called snake today phones are slender can hold lots of different software and i can even watch netflix on it to be honest there was a time when i didn't really like maths it was complicated and scary i'm lucky that my mom helped me to see that it can be fun to explore different ways of approaching a maths problem using objects now i enjoy maths and it's one of my favorite subjects in some ways technology brings risks the most obvious for me is the internet my parents give me lots of advice on how to stay safe online we do lots of e-safety in school recently i looked at a bunch of fake stories including one which claimed that a man had pretended to be deaf for 60 years to avoid talking to his family i know that i'm supposed to give advice to my 10 year old self which feels a bit strange since i've only been 11 for seven weeks anyway my advice would be dream big and don't be afraid to try something just because you're young there may be more men than women in some steam careers but we can easily change that thank you for listening to my thoughts on steam Myra you are an absolute gem i thoroughly enjoyed listening to you speak and i don't know if you're going to do any more lectures anywhere but if you ever want to do a guest lecture from one of my courses i would love to have you in there and talk to my students about all the things you mentioned i can't imagine what it must be like even at my age creating an airplane that goes anywhere it would simply crash and burn so i really just loved hearing your story and i loved having you here so thank you myra you're an absolute gem thank you we're get to move now to italy where we have a young woman sarah matessoni hello hello anthony see hello anthony thank you for introducing me uh so i'm an italian girl my name is sarah i'm a student of economics i'm actually playing my master of science now it's pretty hard to get in after myra's astonishing intervention but you know we got to do what we got to do um well anyways i um i'm uh i wanted to start this intervention with a with an anecdote it was something that happened to me so i am passionate about technology i've always loved coding and study technology for most of my also during my economic student path and uh i had my computer broke my computer broke and i needed to take it to the assistant center and i put i perfectly knew that the problem was a paste that is inside your computer it's um it's a thermal paste that makes them probably with the heating it like the computer heats up so i brought it to the assistant center and i explained this to the guy that was working there it was like the first thing that the guy told me was no it's not um i was like no no i'm pretty pretty sure it's that you should go for it and um and you didn't believe me so i brought up this i i invented that my father was an engineer and um and that he told me that he was uh that that was the problem so at that point he kind of believed me more but i wanted to reason on this like sense of of this instinct that i had to bring up a man to make my word more reliable this wasn't definitely the first time that that happened but um it's a feeling that we have pretty often and i think this comes from the lack of or the very the scarcity of role models that we have in such fields like we don't picture women as competent and we don't picture competent women easily in in in stem fields in general and when i started when i started studying public economics i was uh uh the weren't as many women in politics as there are now so things have changed and in five years i would have the some president some very important politicians that are women and it's very easy to look up to them and be like finally inspire and be able to picture ourselves uh ourselves in higher positions so what i would give to um as a piece of advice to a 10 year old meme um i couldn't i couldn't choose one so i decided to put two so the first would be not to settle uh don't think that if there's no one that is up there that you can look up to you can't be one of them and um i haven't made it i i'm still able to uh i i don't have this feeling of wanting to settle i want to uh i have someone to look up to now and the second piece of advice is to be united with other women because for my personal experience they are the best shelter and especially in sharing such feelings and situations very often and so yeah this is pretty much it thank you sir and i tell my students for young women the exact same thing i say you know having a connection to me will help you advance your career but the best thing you can do for your career is connect with other women in your field that network that the strength of those relationships will help carry you through your entire life so thank you sir for being here and for highlighting this really important issue it's so nice to see you my we get to go to belgium now and we have adria jerkin adria adria i'm sorry adria good afternoon so my name is adria jerkin i'm 16 years old i'm belgian from brasil and i actually leave just a few steps away from the european union at portiers when i was young i struggled at school school didn't give me the opportunity to appreciate mathematics or sciences we just followed the program without feeling any passion so school made me think that i wasn't good enough i had a feeling of failure but luckily thanks to other positive influences in my life i decided to convince myself that i could be good at anything that i wanted to do i came to the conclusion that if you truly want to believe to achieve a goal you have to believe in yourself as a group more and more comfortable in math and sciences studies i started to think that it was important for me to know what career path i wanted to take computer sciences mechanical engineering i didn't know exactly what i wanted to study but what i knew was that i wanted to be a part of the evolution of technology to make an impact in society to participate in a project that can be skilled globally and help others when i started to talk about it the answer i received were are you sure it's a man's job you know it's difficult are you gonna make it science is often considered a male-dominated field those answers made me doubt for a moment but as i grew to know myself better every day i realized that the best way to motivate me is to tell me i can't do it because then i will fight for it today even in europe we are still surrounded by prejudice about the abilities of girls to fulfill any position in the society i feel that is our mission to prove them that they are wrong and finally if i could give advice to my 10 years old self i will tell myself you should spend more time understanding deeper the sentence we had at the entrance of our school that said let your dreams devour your life let your life devour your dreams because as girls everything everything is possible thank you i'm very grateful for being able to be here adry those are so powerful words and uh it's just i i can't even say anything to fill in the gap here you are awesome thank you so much for taking the time to be here we get to go now to greece so we're going to fly into southern europe uh with anita nomicos anita i see you good afternoon everyone it is my great pleasure to be here today at this very important event for young girls like myself my name is anita i'm 14 years old and i go to st katharine's a british school in greece living in such a modern and evolving world i think that the importance of women pursuing careers in the science technology engineering arts and mathematics is more important now than it ever was having three brothers who are constantly fight with puts into perspective that women and men are capable of the same things an example is when we fight sometimes i win and sometimes my brothers win the message of this is that through women pursuing careers it can help bridge the gender digital divide according to research the cover 19 crisis has accelerated digital technology by three to four years this just shows how it is with greater reason that we should engage the european community and promote collaboration through partnerships despite significant improvements in the last couple of years women are still underrepresented in science and technology this is due to a variety of reasons mostly related to the role allocated to women in modern society as well as pre-existing prejudices that form glass ceilings while encouraging male presence in the workplace it is also however a result of lack of information which places young women in difficult position of making a career choice with little knowledge of a bit of available positions what seems to be missing a good role models that could act as inspiration and source of information and guidance and offer a glimpse into the reality of being a female employed in the field of science and technology this is where we come in as young women we can form a community and learn and go after what we want although it may sound straightforward there are many obstacles that do not allow this to be as easy as it should be first of all at school there's a lack of clubs that do all these things like clubbing computing coding computing and learning to use 3d printers along with this comes a fear that some girls face like no girls will join or it will be boys or maybe that their friends think it's weird but as a matter of fact I think that we should normalize all of this and think of it as an advantage that we are educated and know about these things in addition parents teachers and career guidance counselors will have a significant role in assisting or hindering the way young women choose their career path and that choice begins early on from school all the way through to higher education I am certain that if we follow through and do these things it will encourage girls all over the world to pursue these careers if I were to give my 10-year-old self advice it would be to not let things that were matter in the future stop you from doing things that will matter in the future thank you Anita and I have to share my grandparents are from Greece and so I wish that you had a chance to connect with them because I think they would have been so inspired by your words today and it's just hearing from you so encouraging to see that path that you've charted for yourself so thank you Anita it's a privilege we want to go now to Switzerland to Yasmin Samawi Yasmin Hi thank you so much for having me I am really grateful for this opportunity a bit about myself my name is Yasmin Samawi I am 14 years old and I am from Geneva so ever since I was young my brother who had the background in STEM had always encouraged me and pushed me to try and exchange things related to STEM I always thought that a girl like me that does ballet wouldn't suit these type of things but I was wrong later on when quarantine started my brother showed me a video office furikon which is a shape that is especially designed to roll on forever I was very curious about how the object was back rotated so my brother said we could we could do some 3d printing and designing together we sat down together and watched videos on 3d printers and the printing process then I decided to to research the subject on my own I learned different types of printers programs and materials my brother and I spent quarantine working on this 3d printer and creating different models of rooms and houses which is a great passion of mine this pushed me to want to master this skill and so I joined my school's 3d printing and designing class I was surprised to be the only girl there the guys in the class were shocked to see me while the teacher was happy this showed me that we as girls must be more curious regardless of whether the topic falls under certain stereotypes or not that is to say that not one thing is boys only or girls only when it comes to education we as girls should not be afraid to follow and or try new topics to this day I continue to design and print 3d model models and continue to improve my level of skill so if I were to give my 10-year-old self advice after this experience I would say that when something in the world catches your eye find others who are willing to teach you and also find others who share your passion and are willing to grow alongside you thank you guys mean I love that message of curiosity and I see that in your eyes I see how curious you are about the world around you in the area that you're working in and I think that's going to serve you so well through the entire life no matter what career you go into and what you choose that sense of curiosity gives you purpose and I really really admire you for that so thank you very much we got a special opportunity now as I mentioned before the we've been running a campaign online that focuses on advice for our 10-year-old selves and we've heard from so many women now about their advice from for their 10-year-old self so we want to show you now a highlight reel that pulls out the kind of best advice that we've given ourselves over the last few weeks and I'm really really excited to see this because we're going to see so many different people familiar faces and very new faces so if we could go ahead and make that happen this video is for European celebration of girls in ICT 10-year anniversary if I would give advice to my 10-year-old self I would say keep learning and believe in yourself because amazing opportunities are waiting for you don't be afraid of change and never stop learning just go for it and don't be afraid of making mistakes follow your dreams even though people may tell you it's difficult or maybe even impossible it doesn't matter how much money you'll make it won't matter how many degrees you have or how big your house is what will matter is the people in your life who you care about and the people who care about you don't be afraid to experience everything and compete with the best version of yourself amazing things are yet to come that the possibilities are endless and make sure that you jump on the train you can even drive it if you like and most of all enjoy the journey be brave and don't give up on your dreams you can do anything if you believe in yourself and your dreams keep our head up and never let someone say something mean to her or say that I can't do something because I'm a girl don't be afraid of trying new things and don't let others influence you especially when it comes to something you're passionate about do what makes you happy regardless of what others say mean or believe be kind and try not to care about what others think of you always keep your goals in mind and never let anyone or anything keep you away from doing what you love but to be able to do so self-confidence and self-awareness are fundamental to not get discouraged by either comments you might receive or whatever people might think so always fight for your goals and never let anyone tell you what you should or should not be believe a life to the fullest to be yourself and to believe in your capacity to succeed try what makes your heart vibe practice it day by day and try it again just view your world being miracles and have the trust you'll create anything you set out to just stop caring about what other people have to say trust your judgment keep developing new ideas share them with others and never give up dear marta you are perfect just as you are keep your head up and follow your dreams don't be afraid to take risks divide expectations and forge your own path I will you hang up my friend I'm not far away from my 10 years old but I feel so much over the field of time and be always positive smiling open to the new adventure we travel speak foreign languages and discover world cultures life is full of challenges and sometimes these can seem insurmountable whether you're preparing for an exam practicing for a recital or trying out for a sports team but if you can take those challenges and break them into smaller pieces it's easier to tackle each of these tasks and you're able to celebrate each small success along the way and don't forget to take the time to celebrate those successes you are amazing and you deserve it never stop exploring as every new experience will take you a step closer to your purpose so you keep trying your best and everything is easy and don't underestimate yourself to be the best and do the best of all the times let your dreams devour your life not your life devour your dreams because I feel everything everything is complete with the standard for myself to keep on exchanging with others to not be afraid to keep on exploring fields of my interest whether it is science technologies or arts just go and get it you can do anything that you want my advice to my 10 year old self seems a little strange since it's only been a short seven weeks since i was 10 anyway my advice is that maths and science are a lot more fun and a lot less scary if you're a little brave so don't be afraid to do something new just because you're young be inspired by digital innovation it also encourages to find your place in the digital space simultaneously inspire others to build digital future together there's no limit to what you can do all depends on you i wish you all great girls in ict okay i just can't even express how awesome that video is that's the coolest thing i've seen in a very very long time i'm gonna have to play that over and over and over again after we finish this event because it's just i can't get enough of seeing all these amazing people talk about their experiences we're gonna wrap up now i wanted to hand over the microphone to Jaroslaw he has been so formidable and making this happen i can't thank you enough Jaroslaw you are amazing thank you very much Antoni and thank you very much Hansika for the great moderation and great cooperation on this project and thank you to all our high-level speakers and our incredible girls for the beautiful stories and insights they have shared with us it has been personally inspiring and i hope that this celebration has inspired all the girls following us today to consider careers in the icts this session not only inspired us by but gave us some practical advice moving forward on following our dreams not caring what others think being curious and taking chances i myself took the opportunity earlier this week to share the video on the advice to my 10 year old self my advice is inspire others to build a digital future together there is no limits what you can do all depends on you so let's make it all happen together i would like to take this opportunity to thank everyone again for this incredible event and to remind you to join us at 16 hours for the girls in ict global celebration when Antoni will be also speaking and sharing his wisdom i'd like to give a special thanks to Antoni who has been instrumental in organizing this event and to all the partners who have nominated the girls speaking here today Antoni you have the last word as the leader of the equals EU being the platform which we are strongly supporting and looking forward to working with you on the innovation for empowerment of the girls in icts thank you i appreciate that and i'm gonna end with just a huge thank you to the following folks Andrea Daphne Elisa Marta Mia Milena Eliana Leila Fiona Nadja Alexandra Maria Selenor Nelly Eve Nuria Mira Sarah Audrey Anita and Yasmin you guys are amazing you hear this all the time that you are the future that is the absolute truth and i want you each to know how much i appreciate what you've done here today for me as a teacher and as a student because i learned from you as much as you do from me tomorrow next year next week if you ever need advice if you ever need a connection please reach out to me i'm on all the social media connect with me and i will do everything i can to help you accelerate your careers and finally i just want to encourage everyone if you're into this gender inclusion thing which you all are by now if you haven't been convinced by now i don't know what would convince you please sign up for our newsletter we're putting out a monthly newsletter that's all about gender inclusion and innovation it's good practices so that you can take this idea forward thank you again and i hope everyone has a great day thank you very much