200,000+ government school girls to be prepared for 'new collar jobs': IBM India

NEW DELHI, MARCH 14: The under-represented female population in coding and STEM arenas is to undergo an overhaul with IBM's recent initiatives. IBM India, at its India Developer Day, announced a collaboration with state governments across India to prepare over 2 lakh girls and women in government schools for STEM subjects and coding. Of those, top-performing 50,000 girls will be given opportunities to participate in IBM coding challenges and hackathons.

The program has been launched by IBM with co-operation of Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) and Nasscom. Another multi-year program, 'India Developer Champions', was launched by IBM to recognize the contributions of developers to open source community on developer day. 

IBM Developer Day is a day-long event designed for developers to enhance their skills and gain hands-on experience with the latest open source technologies including Cloud, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Blockchain, Data & Analytics and Quantum.

Chairman, President and CEO of IBM, Ginni Rometty reaffirmed IBM’s commitment to open source technologies and the ecosystem it supports while asserting three guiding principles: open governance, open collaboration and giving back to the open source community.

‘’IBM wants to put a spotlight on the 23 million developers and data scientists in the world who work across industries and who, through their creativity and skill, are making a real difference to society,” said Bob Lord, IBM Senior Vice President, Cognitive Applications and Developer Ecosystems. “The IBM Developer Champions program will help shine a light on the significant contributions coming from open source developers in India – a massively-important market.’’

Ravi Shankar Prasad, Union Minister - Electronics and Information Technology and Law and Justice commenting on the initiative said, "India’s software and technology industry has scaled great heights. The Software Product Policy 2019 will further boost the demand for developers and India as a software product power can create 3.5 million jobs by 2025. It’s time to recognize, reward and showcase the developers who are making the vision of Digital India a reality."

“We are witnessing remarkable growth in the ecosystem propelled by innovative thinking where technology plays a revolutionary role. We believe that our association with IBM will not only catalyze the developer community but will also help design path-breaking solutions for disaster management and preparedness for society at large." KS Viswanathan, Vice President (Industry Initiatives), NASSCOM, Bangalore.

Besides Girls of Code and India Developer Champions, other programs announced were the extension of existing initiatives, Call for Code and Code and Response: 

• Code and Response – In its first year of Code and Response, IBM announced that it will pilot Project Owl, the winning solution from Call for Code 2018, in disaster-struck regions like Kerala, Puerto Rico, North Carolina and Osaka. IBM’s Code and Response is a $25 million, four-year global deployment initiative to put open source technologies developed as part of coding challenges such as Call for Code in the communities where they are needed most. Code and Response include resources to build, fortify, test, and implement solutions at scale -- including through the IBM Corporate Service Corps.
• Call for Code – Registrations for the 2019 round of the Call for Code Global Challenge are open. Call for Code is the largest and most ambitious effort bringing start-up, academic and enterprise developers together to leverage cloud, data and AI to develop technologies that improve health and community well-being for those impacted by natural disasters.
• Girls of Code – Early this week, IBM announced a collaboration with state governments across India to prepare 200,000+ girls and women in government schools over the next three years for “new collar” jobs through the exploration and study of STEM subjects in classrooms and online. A subset of this program, ‘Girls of Code’ will provide 50,000 top-performing female students a unique opportunity to participate in coding challenges and ‘Code and Response’ hackathons.