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Belfast Met IT camp encourages young females to take up careers in the industry

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A total of 42 girls aged 15 to 19 graduated on Friday from a special IT summer camp aimed at helping them develop skills and get their foot on the ladder of a career in this lucrative and rapidly growing industry.

The free of charge week long camp which was held at Belfast Met’s state of the art Titanic Quarter Campus was aimed at helping young women – who are dramatically underrepresented in the industry - to develop their creative digital skills and enrich their knowledge of ICT by participating in workshops centred on Cyber Security, Internet of Things and Tech web development.

The girls also got the chance to meet, chat and learn from successful females in the IT and digital related disciplines from firms such as EY, Liberty IT, Allstate, Neueda which sponsored the initiative along with the DfE funded Bring IT On programme and Invest NI.

Eve Brennan (18) from Belfast took part in the camp and said: “I really enjoyed the whole week-long programme. I especially enjoyed listening to the inspirational women who work in various IT companies tell us about how they got to where they are. The cyber security and Internet of Things aspects were my favourite.”

The graduation event was attended by industry professionals and representatives from the Department of the Economy including Beverley Harrison, Director of Further Education.

Director of Curriculum and Learner Success at Belfast Met, Dr Jonathan Heggarty MBE said: “We are delighted that we have run this very popular summer camp for the past four years. The goal of Belfast IT Girls is to help participants to hone their digital skills and introduce them to leading professionals so that they get a taste of what it is like to work in the IT sector. There is a huge demand for talent in this growth area, and this reflected in Belfast Met’s wide range of courses and apprenticeships developed in conjunction with industry. We designed this programme with industry partners in order to encourage female students to consider future education and employment within the exciting world of digital technologies. It is vital that the under representation of females in the UK ICT sector and in education is addressed and Belfast Met, which is a leader in IT education and training, is keen to support efforts in addressing this.”

Belfast Met runs a wide range of IT related courses, visit our website for more information or come along to the upcoming open days on August 22 and 30 from 9am to 1pm at the Titanic Quarter Campus.


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