Gaza Sky Geeks is proud to announce that we were selected as a finalist for the United Nation’s Gender Equality and Mainstreaming in Technology (GEM-TECH) award! We were amongst 360 nominations for the 2014 GEM-TECH awards and were selected as one of the top finalists.
View a list of all finalists here, or play the video below to learn about each organization. (Gaza Sky Geeks is featured at 4:20!)
The UN chose to recognize Gaza Sky Geeks for our successes in empowering our female entrepreneurs. To learn more about our achievements in this space, see this June 2014 piece in The Christian Science Monitor and our blog post about creating women’s leadership in Gaza’s tech sector.
The UN believes in women’s digital empowerment. UN Women makes this a high priority in all areas of the UN’s work, and the International Telecommunications Unit (ITU), the UN’s specialized agency for the tech field, adopted the ITU Gender Equality and Mainstreaming Policy (GEM) in 2013. According to the UN, “Realizing these goals within the development context presents many opportunities as well as challenges. While the potential is great and there are many examples of progress, there are also gaps and a need for increased attention, visibility, understanding, investment and action.”
The annual GEM-TECH award aims to push the envelope on women’s meaningful involvement in tech fields, both as decision-makers and as creators. For more information, see the UN Women press release here and follow #GEMtechAwards on Twitter. Gaza Sky Geeks was selected as one of the top 5 finalists in the category of ICT Applications, content, production capacities and skills for women’s economic empowerment and poverty reduction.
The winners of the award include UNESCO’s Women in African History e-learning tool, iMerit Technology in India, BCS Chartered Institute for IT in the United Kingdom, and Centro de Investigación para la Acción Feminina (CIPAF) in the Dominican Republic.
by contributing writer
Jessica Rose
Volunteer Communications Manager, Gaza Sky Geeks
