Intel holds discussion on 'Closing the Gender Technology Gap'

"Technology brought peace to my community," said CEO, Manzil Foundation, Shazia Mirza, who runs charity schools in the city's slum, believing that a rapid change in education for poor is possible through the internet.
She was sharing her experience on spreading education through internet at a panel discussion on 'Closing the Gender Technology Gap', organised by Intel Pakistan at a local hotel on Thursday.
She said that using internet technology had widely helped her accumulate donations to run charity education.
"I began a school 13 years ago in the city's slum but everyone close to me cautioned me over security and safety in the poor locality and even teachers were reluctant to attend schools there due to which charity education was hard to continue," she recalled.
With drying up finances, she said, Manzil Trust had baldy fallen in financial problems but using email service helped her to accumulate donations to run the charity schools. Similarly, social media websites like Facebook and Skype helped in getting quality teachers as online teaching had been quite impressive to fill the children's mind with knowledge.
She said that many Pakistani living abroad had a strong desire to help the local communities in different professional fields but could not do it on financial grounds, suggesting that their abilities could be acquired through internet services. The use of internet could also improve quality of education especially in the slum areas, Shazia said.
"It is about a quality education not education or knowledge itself," she told, saying that the standard of education was as better as at any other schools in the city and she attributed her welfare institution's success to the internet technology.
Other senior female executives were Saeeda Madviwala, CEO and Director TONI&GUY, Pakistan; Lubna Lakhani, CEO Raintree Spa; Salma Jafri, Content Marketing Consultant for Entrepreneurs and team Lead Google Business Groups (GBG) Women; Zainab Ansari, CEO Xenith Public Relations Pakistan and Asma Aziz, PR and Marketing Manager, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka.
Sharing their experiences, they said that the internet technology had shaped up their work.
Lubna Lakhani said that the use of internet had spread her business as without such a facility she would not be able to grow her start-up.
She said that it was an easy and human friendly effective medium as hiring big expensive billboards would scale down finances to meet the expenditures. She termed the internet technology a 'driving' force in Pakistan.
Salma Jafri, Zainab Ansari and Asma Aziz agreed that literacy rate among women should be increased, which stood at mere 26 percent despite being the largest gender group in the country.
They said that the computer literacy would help either gender group to augment knowledge and skills.
The topics of discussion included: exploring ICT's role in empowering women in Pakistan, role of women entrepreneurs as the very life blood of the economy, increasing the ICT capabilities of girls and women has the potential to change lives by transforming education, improving health and reducing infant mortality.