How to Create Your Own Success: a photo journal by Sally Ahmed Mosad

Location: Mansoura, Egypt

The first GWITA Forum was held on September 29, 2012 in Mansoura, Egypt. The goal of this gathering was to use technology to help women realize their potential as leaders, entrepreneurs and individuals.

The speakers in this series include women from various backgrounds. Sally Ahmed Mosad spoke in general about problems that face women in the field of technology. She said that every woman in our country wants to be useful to her community and country, but often find troubles. One of these troubles is that the field of technology is rapidly developing. Women must be well-informed and study hard. At the same time, they have to care fort their children and her home. At times, women need to travel outside their city to attend conferences or utilize educational opportunities.

Our event covered how we must face these hardships and conquer them.

Speakers in the first half of our seminars included Eman Riffat, Shaymaa Mostafa, and Samar Ali. The central themes of our discussions talked about how you must get up whenever you fall. They talked about how women face challenges still can reach their goals. These speeches introduced a challenge for girls to improve themselves. Nothing is impossible.

This was also an opportunity for women to share their personal stories, like what they decided to do after graduation. Some spoke about the women in technology space and experiment they have done with Microsoft and cloud computing. Work like this has reached thousands of women around the world.

The second half of speakers included Zahraa Mohamed, Shimaa Adel- Shimaa, Noha El-guindy, and Hend El-Masry-Hend who also spoke about careers and specifically how they were able to better themselves and still tend to the home.

Noha El-guindy spoke to women who are already married but still want to make something useful for other women in the community. She talked about opportunities the work from home as a blogger and her own blog "om KOKO." Hend El-Masry-spoke about how she was also able to work from home while studying in the faculty of engineering.

After these sessions, we thank all thanked attendants, speakers and volunteers. We look forward to hosting another GWITA session in the future.

After registration. Participants Sally Ahmed and Yomma Hafez

We displayed the purpose of this event and GWiTA's goals by Sally Ahmed.

First session, "Take the Challenge ", speaker: Yomna Hafez

Guest speakers discussed topics around how women can improve themselves and become more effective in their communities

Session 2, "Be You", speaker: by Eman Riffat.

Speaker Eman Riffat challenged the girls to improve themselves

Session 3, "Women Rock it", Speaker: Shaymaa Mostafa

Our fabulous meal

Lunch Break outside

The 4th session," Potential difference" by Samar Ali.

The 5th session,"s3eedy geeks" by Zahraa Mohamed.

The 6th session, " Your life interface " by Shimaa Adel

The 7th session," The power of WAHM  "by Noha El-guindy.

The 8th session, "Muslim Designer" by Hend El-Masry

Hend spoke about the designer and how we can work from the home. She talked about her working during her studying in the faculty of engineering.

After these sessions, we thank all attendants, Speakers and volunteers.

Meet a Google Ambassador: Rofayda Tarek

Meet Rofayda Tarek. She is the Co-leader of the Women in Technology chapter in Alexandria, Egypt and also serves as an Ambassador for the programme.

At just 26, the list of accomplishments to her name is already impressive. She currently works as an Application consultant for the Oracle Partner UCIS, has a degree in Engineering from Alexandria University and completed a diploma in System Development.

As an Ambassador for Google Women in Technology, it’s her job to share her experiences with other women in her region and promote the benefits of going online.
Listening to her discuss her work as an Ambassador, her enthusiasm and commitment to the project are clear, as well as her desire to empower women in her community. ‘Women in Technology provides us with a dream,’ she says. ‘Lots of ladies need programmes like this and it can make a huge contribution to their lives.’

Overcoming challenges
She first learned about the Ambassador programme last year when a friend invited her to attend a workshop hosted by Google.
‘It was a really interesting workshop and I got to see what it would be like to work at Google,’ she says. ‘There were some ladies from Google speaking about subjects such as achieving the right work/life balance.’
A speaker who discussed her experience of starting her own business particularly impressed Rofayda – something she says can be ‘very hard and challenging in Egypt’.

Getting more women involved
What exactly does the Ambassador role mean to her? ‘I am looking forward to being a representative and helping to make the programme a success,’ she says. ‘We need to get as many women from the community involved as possible.’
On a practical level, being an Ambassador involves hosting events, attending meetings with other women involved in the project and also receiving training on issues relevant to Google.
So far, she has organised an event for about 35 attendees at her former university. ‘The event went very well, but it was quite challenging and involved a lot of organisation and planning,’ she says. ‘It was a new experience for me. I felt like a manager, having to organise my teams and make sure everything gets done.’
Following on from the success of this event, she plans to host more workshops in the future and meet other women in her region who would like to broaden their knowledge of technology.

Helping women achieve their dreams
So what does the future hold for Rofayda? On a personal level, she is keen to achieve a balance between her professional and personal lives, as well as juggling other projects she is involved in such as Women in Technology.
She is also optimistic of the positive impact that the Ambassador programme can have. ‘I would like to help women achieve their dreams. I would be very happy if one day a woman came up to me at an event and told me she had found the programme beneficial and inspiring.’

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