On Saturday 30 April, EBU Technology & Innovation welcomed a group of young schoolgirls from the local Geneva community to spend a fun and interactive afternoon at EBU headquarters as part of the ITU Girls in ICT day initiative.

T&I colleagues introduced the young students to technology in a fun, hands-on and interactive way by providing them with an immersive audiovisual and engineering experience. The girls learned how to use software tools to record, edit and mix speech and music for publishing via EBU Euroradio's Storyboard tool, which facilitates the distribution of audio on social platforms.

It was also a great opportunity for the students to take a look at the world of media technology, with visits to the Eurovision master control room and the EBU's production studio.

Storyboards

Have a listen to their work on Storyboard (below) as well as a short video of the day's experience (in the sidebar). Not bad for just one afternoon of experimenting and learning!

The goal of this project is to reinforce an understanding among young female students that they really do have the same opportunity as boys to study any subjects of their choosing and that there are many rewarding paths. We hope that the visiting students will be enthusiastic about technology after that day's experience, that will help to ignite that little spark to pursue studies and a career in areas that they wouldn't have otherwise considered, and that it creates a ripple effect in changing mindsets of peers also.

Background

The International Girls in ICT Day is an initiative created by the International Telecommunications Union in 2011. The aim is to encourage girls and young women to actively pursue studies and careers in STEM disciplines (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics). This annual, world-wide event is supported by other UN agencies, schools, government leaders, private sector companies and other partners. EBU T&I has been involved for the past five years.

EBU T&I also actively works on raising the profile of women engineers in its key industry events through data-driven change. We have also joined the BBC's 50:50 challenge. Find out more about this an other actions on the EBU Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Initiative web page.