Django Girls Workshop #3 Successfully Organized in Kathmandu

It’s rare to see people in our society encouraging a woman to choose a career in the technological field. They try to steer women away from the field of computers and electronics. People believe that men can easily aside women in the fast and growing tech industry. So, people think that to have successful career women should carve a path that will work more in their favor rather than against them.

There are many organizations worldwide that are working closely to break through this situation. Django Girls is one of those non-profit organizations carrying out activities internationally to empower and help women around the globe. The organization helps women organize one-day free programming workshop by providing the tools, support, and resources. The organization believes that women can do equally well and great in the field of technology as men with the right guidance and proper resources made available to them.

As per Django Girls’ official site, in the last two years, it has organized 252 events with an army of 507 volunteers. It has been to 180 cities in 65 countries, including Nepal.

Django Girls Kathmandu Workshop #3

Django Girls Kathmandu has been running the initiative of Django Girls in Nepal. The initiative here has been undertaken by Bits Innovation, a reputed IT company based in Kathmandu. It has successfully organized three programming workshop in the country; the third workshop was organized on 29^th – 30^th September. The two-day workshop was organized at Kings College, Bijulibazzar where 45 girls from various colleges participated in learning about Python (a programming language) and Django (a web framework based on Python). The event was sponsored by Github and co-sponsored by Leapfrog Academy and Lions of Uttarbahini.

django-girls-photo — Groupfie@Django Workshop #3

Internationally, the Django Girls Workshop is organized for a day, starting from the early morning till late in the evening, but since things are not the same here, organizers of the workshop partitioned the course and carried the workshop in two days adding few fun events to make the workshop entertaining and delightful without losing the essence of learning.

The first day of the workshop was much of an introductory session to get the participants familiar with Django. Participants were taught the basics of getting started on programming with Django. The following day was more about diving inside the core of the framework. The learning curve was a bit more complex than the previous day.

Within these two days, known personalities of IT industry like, Mrs. Mona Nyachhyon Gopaju, CEO, Logpoint, Mr. Dixanta Bahadur Shrestha, CEO, Leapfrog Academy, Ms. Nikita Acharya, CEO, Urban Girls, Mr. Shankar Bhattarai, CEO and Founder, Bits Innovation and Mr. Narottam Aryal, Principal and Director of King’s College gave their speech and shared their insights on women entrepreneurship. They encouraged and motivated the participants to learn and cope with new technologies to reach new heights.

TechLekh caught up with Mr. Santosh Purbey, CTO, Bits Innovation, who was also the chief instructor of the workshop, “It delights me to say that this time, we have the participants outside of the valley. 4 girls all the way from Biratnagar have come and joined the workshop. This marks that we are doing our job pretty well. Being part of this initiative has been a great deal for us. It has provided us a platform where we can be a medium to inspire girls and help them get involved in the field of technology.”

I interviewed three of the participants during the event and asked them these two questions to know their insights on the event, i) How do you come to know about the workshop? and, ii) How it feels to be part of this workshop?

This was what they had to say:

Sharadha Silwal, Student, Computer Engineering, Kathmandu University

“I came to know about this event through Facebook. Till now, the event has been great. With great mentors around, they have guided us in each step keeping things fair and understandable. The good part is that things are not monotonous as organizers are engaging us in some fun events in between the sessions.”

Bindu Karki, Student, B.Sc.CSIT, Nihareeka College, Biratnagar

“One of my teachers, recommended me to join this workshop. I learned more about the event from Facebook where I looked into the details about what the workshop was all about. After getting a rough idea on it, I thought to give it a shot as it seemed that learning Django would definitely add some value to my skills. Throughout now, learning Django has been quite fantastic. The environment is good with girls of my age learning together. It’s fun!”

Ashmita Thapa, Student, B.Sc.CSIT, Samridhi College, Bhaktapur

“I had thought the event will be like a 9-to-5 coding session and things will get boring as time passes. But it isn’t as such. Things are cool, people are nice, and the learning environment is overwhelming. Mentors are responsive. When you get to any problem, they help everyone to go at the same pace. I like this event, and wish to learn a lot from it.”

My opinion

Overall, the event was good. It was great to see girls learning to code in such setup and environment. The organizers had engineered everything well. Keeping the workshop entertained without losing the vigor of learning Django was the best part. Organizations like Django Girls are doing a great job by conducting such activities to empower girls to help them learn new tools and techniques of technology. I wish to see Django Girls doing much better than this in near future. I believe that adding more activities in its arsenal would boost the energy of girls even more and will encourage them to go ahead to embark their career in technology.