By Vibhuti Vasudev
Youth for Sustainability Dialogues is a platform for Youth leaders across the world to exchange their thoughts, examine challenges in their local environment with the Sustainable Development Goals ‘SDGs’ as a common thread. The youth are given an opportunity to showcase their projects and initiatives and come together as a youth movement that is truly ‘Global’ towards the achievement of SDGs as defined by the UN. The past session focused on the methods to reinvent education to suit the post COVID-world, while also discussing ways to use digital tools to empower teachers and students.
Y4SD organized the SDG on Degendering STEM Education on 12th February, 2021. The session’s aim was to highlight the initiatives taken by various organizations to promote women in STEM, i.e., science, technology, electronics and mathematics.
The expert for the session was Dr. Mila Mitra, Co-Founder and Academic Head at STEM and Space. The session was moderated by Mark Fonseca Rendeiro, Global Core Team, Masterpeace. The team of panelists included Simran Kaur and Gurmeet Kaur, Girl Up Chhattisgarh; Devanshi Katyal and Sunidhi Chaudhary, Girl Up Aadya; Chinmayi SK, Founder- The Bachao Project; and Lili Schiestl, Heart of Code.
Girl Up Chhattisgarh is a student-led voluntary club under Girl Up campaign, a UN Foundation Initiative, working towards community development and advocacy. Gurmeet and Simran discussed about the Social Media campaign whose objective was to spread awareness about the inherent bias people have against women in STEM and constituting a new image of representation of what it means to be someone in STEM career. They organized STEM competition for kids and conducted interviews.
Girl Up Aadya’s representatives Sunidhi and Devanshi talked about an interactive session they hosted on ‘Career building and having a startup’ with Ms. Anubha Maneshwar. Around 100+ students from IIITD, TIET and DTU joined and gained valuable insight on the same. Another session on ‘Resume and Profile Building’ was organized. The club, through social media, has been spreading awareness about coding language developed by women, LGBTQ community and other such informative and impactful topics.
Lili Schiesti has worked in gender projects in STEM and is currently doing an outreach internship working with Mozilla. She told about the journey of her being connected with Women Hackspace, a space for tech enthusiasts to meet, code and make, founded in 2015. At Heart of Code, the members organize hackdays, heart of camp, organize conferences, events and podcasts. Lili also stressed on methods to start a woman and tech network.
Chinmayi SK elaborated on her Project Bachao, an 8-year old techno-feminist collective which primarily supports women, LGBTQ and gender diverse groups. She talked about the initial journey of her project, finding a technical solution to address gender inequalities. The team of engineers made a panic button app for women. Chinmayi also explained various ways as to how technology has to be built to help women feel safe and fight for their rights, which was the focus of the Bachao Project. The team also had various conversations with diverse groups to understand the issues better and make them more inclusive in society.
Finally, Ms. Mila talked about the gap in STEM and the current problems, the ways to bring women into STEM, the economic factors in India, and how gender gap can be reduced in STEM in India while also mentioning some Indian women role models. She also threw light on her organization, STEM and Space. Ms. Mitra advised to support other women and girls and to always promote outreach. Mark, as the moderator, helped foster the dialogue by inviting Dr. Mila Mitra after every project presentation and sharing his experiences with Leli and Chinmayi, both of whom he knows personally. The session was a great success and was concluded with a vote of thanks by the moderator.
