The international technopark “Astana Hub” has concluded the second generation of the “IT-Aiel” program. The peculiarity of this project is that here, young ladies who want to start their career in the IT sector can learn the “No code”, “Freelance School”, as well as “E-commerce” programming directions and other digital skills for free.
Women’s success in the IT world
This program, which began last year, continued this year, and more than 3 thousand women improved their knowledge in the IT sector. The project covers women over 18 years old, including the unemployed, women on maternity leave, students and young entrepreneurs. The majority of participants are registered from the West Kazakhstan region, Astana, Almaty.
The second generation has a number of successful initiatives. For example, Sagilya Sagidan from Kyzylorda invented an optimal learning platform called “EdKids”. This service provides children with quality education and helps them develop their skills from an early age. This program is focused on interactive learning and is accessible to a wide audience. And Asel Karazhan from Aktobe developed a high-quality website for the AKM Education school, which teaches mental arithmetic. This school helps children and adolescents develop analytical thinking, improve memory and attention, and offers modern teaching methods. Meruert Zharylkasynova from Astana also showed bright results in the project, launching the Qadam mobile application. This product is very convenient for entrepreneurs and startup owners to easily search for information about available grants and support programs and apply for them. And Aidana Sembayeva from Almaty developed a smart chatbot that quickly answers frequently asked questions on the Telegram network. This increases the efficiency of the business process.
According to Daniya Akhmetova, Managing Director of Astana Hub, the number of project participants is increasing every year.
“Last year, 2,634 women from 17 regions of the country applied for the IT-Aiel program in order to improve their knowledge in the IT field. Among them were more than 900 unemployed people, 500 students, 700 self-employed women, as well as more than 400 mothers on maternity leave. The first-year graduates mastered their own IT products, such as websites and applications. Thus, they took an important step towards financial independence and professional development. For example, Aliya Orazymbetova developed the project “CyberBala”, a bot-assistant on digital hygiene and prevention of cyberbullying among children and adolescents. There are thousands of such examples. This year, during the program, women also gained new opportunities that will help them build a successful career and contribute to the development of society, ”she said.
The course content offered within the second wave of the project includes: “No Code School” for creating websites, mobile applications, chatbots and other digital products that do not require coding; “Freelance School” for working remotely, choosing your own direction, selling services and attracting clients; “E-commerce” for developing targeted advertising, maintaining pages on social networks, opening an online store, selling goods on international online platforms, enabling online payments and teaching the basics of cybersecurity.
The “IT-Aiel 2.0” project is being implemented by the National Commission for Women’s Affairs and Family and Demographic Policy under the President, the Astana Hub International Technopark and the TechnoWomen non-profit organization. With the support of the National Commission, projects such as “TechGirls” and “IT-Aiel”, aimed at attracting girls and women to the IT industry and supporting their startups, are making rapid progress every year.