Digital Literacy for the Youths

5 March 2021, Kathmandu

On the occasion of Open Data Day 2021, Women in STEM is organizing an open data and digital literacy training for the 30 youths (60% female and 40% male) from different socio-economic backgrounds including young women, students, the local activists, CSO leaders, data enthusiasts, people with disabilities, and marginalized communities of Simta Rural
Municipality-06 of Surkhet District at Karnali Province.

This event is supported by Data for Development in Nepal, The Asia Foundation, Ukaid, and Development Initiatives organizations while the Social Awareness Center (SAC) Nepal is the local coordinator for the main day. Also joining us on the main training day are the representatives from Simta Rural Municipality and Youths & Sports Committee of Simta Municipality.

Open data and digital literacy is an annual celebration of open data and until now 245 events have been registered worldwide. Different organizations working for data and digital literacy are celebrating this day to showcase the benefits of open data encouraging people to use the open data.

Women in STEM has also created a local event targeting the youths of Simta R/M to teach them the transferable skills that will help them to evaluate the quality of digital sources of information and communicate better incorporating the 4Cs of learning; Critical thinking, Communication, Creativity, and Collaboration to solve the real-world issues.

Women in STEM has the vision of doubling female representation in STEAM and data fields by educating adolescent girls about the five disciplines of STEAM(Science Technology Engineering Arts and Mathematics) and data literacy through skill-based workshops, mentorships, and digital STEAM materials.

Therefore, we aim to aware the local youths regarding the benefits and use of evidence-based data and digital technology and decision making processes, enhance the data and digital literacy capacity of the youths of simta rural municipality, brainstorm the prevailing social issues around their community, generate potential data-driven and digital solutions to those existing social issues and create the networks of youths who can potentially further advocate open data in Simta Rural Municipality.

The Simta R/M is a distant place in Surkhet district, Karnali province of Nepal. The Karnali
the province is one of the less developed provinces in Nepal.

Karnali zone has the lowest number of female youth in this age group (0.3%) who have attained graduation and above while 4,592 people is the highest number of youths enrolled in lower secondary school. We intend to aware the youths (especially girls and women, students, the local activists, CSO leaders, data enthusiasts, people with disabilities, and marginalized communities) through our open data and digital literacy training where the youths of Simta will use evidence to link open data as a means of addressing the existing local social issues in Simta R/M.

One of the reasons for conducting these workshops is to prepare the girls and youths for the workspace that is in the transition period as they are shifting all data and digital-based. 66.5% of girls/women are in informal sectors as per Nepal Labour survey 2017-18, if youths and women lack the needful data and digital skills they might end up in the informal sectors and face hardships.

Worldwide efforts to use STEAM and data-centered approaches to education are gaining more momentum and there’s a huge demand to fill STEAM-related occupations in an increasingly digital world.

This training/workshop will hence educate the youths in Simta about how data and digital literacy can expand their knowledge beyond the four walls of the building as they will be practicing the design thinking methodology to problem solve the existing issues in their community.

The digital hands-on activities and brainstorming workshop activities under the thematic areas of open access will use the creative, innovative, and interactive approach to bring tangible outputs like data-driven solutions to the local issues.