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Last Updated on Monday, 29 July 2019, 21:24 by Writer
March 2019: Guyanese Girls Code participants learning the intricacies of coding
Ten students from junior secondary schools in Georgetown began a ground-breaking paid five-week internship with the four leading private sector information communication and technology (ICT) enterprises in Guyana, the Ministry of Public Telecommunications (MOPT) said Monday.
These enterprises have been working in partnership with MOPT since the first year of the Ministry’s existence—in 2017.
Two of the five companies started their partnership with the Ministry by winning or participating in the MOPT’s talent-scouting national competitions, the Hackathon and Code Sprint in 2016 and 2017. The companies are Version 75 Solutions/Nexus Hub Inc. (winner Hackathon 2016), Innovative Systems Inc. (InnoSys-Code Sprint 2017), IntellectStorm (participated in every competition), and the BrainStreet Group.
The ministry said the internship is a talent-scouting enterprise that began in March with an outreach programme to the St. Mary’s, Lodge, Carmel, Queenstown and Charlestown secondary schools. Leaders in the partner companies participated in the outreach and spoke with the students about their activities.
The UG Computer Department, GTI and the GITC also joined the team mainly to boost the young people’s understanding of the many ways in which they could use their individual talents such as drawing, singing, writing or dramatizing poetry, in the ICT industry, whether it is animation, robotics, gaming, software design or programmming.
Teachers selected one student from each school who joined the five top-performing students from the six-month “Guyanese Girls Code” training programme that ran from January to May 2019.
On July 22 the ten students began their internship in computer literacy, and will soon go on to gain ICT competencies with the ultimate objective of gaining careers in the field.