Ambassadors

Launching the first Google Women in Tech Ambassadors in MENA

Just before our first anniversary, Google’s Women in Technology group (WiT) is excited to announce the launch of the Google Women in Technology Ambassadors (GWiTA) Programme. The programme is designed to encourage passionate and talented women in the MENA region to expand and share their experiences with other women in their communities.

The Google WiT group was founded in March 2011 in conjunction with g|saudi arabia in Riyadh, where a group of enthusiastic Googlers noticed that registrations from ladies were low compared to men. To encourage more female attendees, we decided to hold a dedicated women’s roundtable breakfast on both days of g|saudi arabia.

We believe that the Internet offers incredible opportunities for everyone, but we see fewer women making use of those in the MENA region. A recent Dubai School of Government report stated that, ‘Women’s online participation is lagging in comparison to their male counterparts, and in comparison to women around the world.’ Following the success of the ladies breakfasts in Saudi Arabia, which was crowned with the participation of over 300 Saudi ladies, the WiT group was born to form and educate ladies of the exciting potential of the internet for them.

The WiT roundtable sessions were repeated at g|maghreb, g|uae, g|jordan 2.0 and g|egypt 2.0 during 2011, and dedicated events for women were held in the UAE and Egypt as part of the Google Serve initiative. Throughout these events we met and heard from over 600 women in the MENA region.

This year, we will continue to run women’s roundtables in conjunction with our g|days, and will be introducing some new initiatives in MENA, one of which is the Google Women in Technology Ambassadors.

Our Ambassadors will help us to form, encourage and support communities of women who wish to learn about new web technologies and tools and implement projects online. These projects can vary widely from business sites to online applications. They will be the leaders of WiT in their locality, have regular meetings with Google WiT members, and receive training with Google on relevant topics.

A GWiTA can be a student or an individual, who wants to volunteer with the Google WiT group to help women in their communities to get online and make the most of the unexplored opportunities available on the internet.

Applications will close for the first round on the 15th April. If you are interested in applying, please visit bit.ly/gwita-signup to sign up!

Patricia Estridge, Outreach Events Manager, MENA