The International Girls in ICT Day 2024 celebrated in the National Assembly of Serbia

25 Apr The International Girls in ICT Day 2024 celebrated in the National Assembly of Serbia

25.04.2024

At the final ceremony in the House of the National Assembly of the Republic of Serbia, today the Association of Business Women in Serbia solemnly celebrated The International Girls in Information and Communication Technologies Day in cooperation with the Ministry of Information and Telecommunications and UNDP.

For the fourteenth year in a row, the Association of Business Women in Serbia celebrates this day, and so far more than 11,000 girls have participated in the celebration. This year, the event lasted for a month and a half and involved over 1,000 girls from more than 100 schools across the country. The Girls in ICT Day is celebrated every fourth Thursday in April and aims to empower girls when choosing future professions, not to succumb to stereotypes, but to be guided by personal interests and talents.

Photo: Marina Jančević

Today’s final ceremony, which was attended by 250 girls from all over Serbia, was opened by the President of the National Assembly of the Republic of Serbia, Ana Brnabic, as the patron of the event for many years. After the opening, the panel “The future is in technology: Empowering girls in ICT” was held, in which Plamena Halaceva, Deputy head of the EU Delegation in Serbia participated, as well as member of the Serbian Academy of Sciences Manuela Stamatovic, owner and Director of Puzzle Consulting and member of ABW Serbia, Marijana Gligoric, co-founder and the Executive director of BrigIT.dev, also member of ABW Serbia, and Zoja Kukic, Haptic Synaptic. With their story, they encouraged girls to aspire to be part of a sector that is a symbol of modernization, innovation and creativity.

Addressing the present girls, the Vice-president of the Association of Business Women in Serbia, Olivera Popovic, said: “Dear girls, we from the Association of Business Women in Serbia have set ourselves the task of helping you and encouraging you to more freely enter the world of ICT, which was and still is considered a male occupation. To encourage you, empower you, and show that you can do it too, and we’ve been doing it for 14 years on this day. Our wish was, and from year to year we see that we are succeeding more and more in this, that as many of you as possible have the opportunity to meet successful businesswomen, managers, to want to be like them, successful businesswomen with whom it is a pleasure to work, that care about their employees, that are humane. Some of you, the former participants of the event, have already started that way, getting educated for professions in ICT, working in large companies or founding your own startups. For nine years we have been encouraging you to participate in the “Capture an Idea” contest, and every year more and more of you find inspiration for new, creative and original ideas that make your fourteen-year-old life better, more meaningful, and healthier. That’s why we reward you. And that’s why, on this day, as in all previous years, we say to all of you: dream your dreams, be curious, see the world with your own eyes, wide open, be brave and persevere and you will succeed!”

As part of the event, an exhibition of the winning works of the “Capture an Idea” competition organized by the Association of Business Women in Serbia (ABW Serbia) was presented for the ninth time in a row, as well as the winning works of the STEM challenge organized by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) with the support of the Ministry of Education and Petlja Foundation.

In addition to the competition, as part of the celebration of The International Girls in ICT Day, the Association of Business Women in Serbia has been organizing meetings of girls with women entrepreneurs, company managers, for fourteen years.

In a great competition of 59 exceptional works, the victory at this year’s “Capture an Idea” competition, whose theme is “Girls are leaders of change”, was won by the students of the Branko Radicevic elementary school from Novi Sad with the work “Together we can change everything”. The second place was taken by the girls of Vozd Karadjordje elementary school from Nis with the work “Interactive Workbook”, while the third place went to the girls from the “Despot Stefan Lazarevic” elementary school from Belgrade with their work “Girls Leaders of Change”. In addition to the prizes for the first 3 places, a special prize was also awarded to the team from the school “Mico Matovic”, Katici, from Ivanjica for the video work “Capture the idea”.

The first-placed teams of the “Capture an Idea” competition were presented with valuable prizes by the Minister of Information and Telecommunications, Mihailo Jovanovic, who is also the honorary patron of the competition, the Vice-president of ABW Serbia, Olivera Popovic and Branka Pudrlja Durbaba, the Chief director for sales and customer satisfaction of A1 Serbia. The prizes were provided by the companies A1 Serbia, the general sponsor of this year’s Girls’ Day, Generali osiguranje Srbija and Klett.

In addition to the National Assembly of the Republic of Serbia, the Ministry of Information and Telecommunications, ABW Serbia and UNDP, the event was supported by the Ministry of Education, the Ministry of Science, Technological Development and Innovation, the Ministry of Economy, the Ministry of Tourism and Youth, the Ministry of State Administration and Local Self-Government. Support was also provided by the Commissioner for Protection of Equality, ITU International Telecommunications Union, A1 Company, UN Women, EU SME Week, CANSEE Canadian-Serbian Business Association, Klett, Eurolog System, Blumen group, Erste bank and Generali osiguranje.