Launch of WoMoz Mombasa
The Official launch of Women and Mozilla Project in Mombasa.
The 1st of November 2013 marks the launching of the Women and Mozilla project here in Mombasa! For the first time ever, Team Mozilla Mombasa organized an event with women as priority attendees!
The event was held at Lotus Hotel Mombasa and amongst the attendants were invited guests, Fridah Theuri - Deputy Director JKUAT Mombasa and a lecturer in Entreprenuership, Mary Kerich - Lecturer in Health, JKUAT Mombasa, Sheikha Dhiyebi - Founder of Kenya Web Solutions, Nabila Hassan Researcher at Steadman Synovate company and Molly Githinji who is the Assistant IT secratary at JKUAT.
Mozilla Mombasa Representative Alifiyah Ganijee kicked off the event by welcoming attendants, guests and shortly thereafter welcomed Ms Fridah to come on stage and share a few words about Women & Entrepreneurship. Indeed she warmed up the event with her clear and concise statements and words of wisdom, what a pleasure it was listening to her!
Thereafter Ms Mary Kerich took it up and inspired the women present on how to be great entrepreneurs, and the famous statement was "Don't beg for 1000 Shillings, make a 1000 Shillings" Her talk was very encouraging, loud and clear.
Moments later, Alifiyah Ganijee was on stage and introduced the WoMoz initiative, what is the Women and Mozilla project all about, why the separate section and it's goals and how women can participate in various Mozilla Projects highlighting on Firefox OS, Webmaker and Localization, thus improving the presence of women in Open Source projects. She also mentioned some of the famous women in FLOSS out which some are from within Africa. Lastly she talked about the opportunities that lies ahead for women in technology and that nothing is impossible when you really have the passion for it!
Quite a good number of women opted to volunteer in some of the projects as well as to contribute in the WoMoz organizing team. Kudos to all of them!
Thereafter, she welcomed Nabila Hassan who is a researcher at Steadman Synovate who thrilled the audience, completely covered in the Islamic attire, she told the women that despite her attire and having a baby whom she had carried during the event as she was talking to the audience, she manages to get great projects and that her dress code, religion or being a woman does not affect her work, career or access to opportunities and that everything is possible, you just need to go for it!Her talk was a real eye-opener!
Later on, we watched some inspiring videos of women in technology and how some of them started off their journey in IT and open source.
Finally, we made closing remarks and the event came to an end with a cake cutting ceremony and networking session.
Special credit goes to Said Fuad who was co-organizer of the event, Zahra Jalalkhan for designing the posters and overall assistance, Musa Alfan for the designing the nametags for all attendants, Magambo Gatobu and Mapenzi Ngala who handled event registration and welcoming people during the event, Andrew Mwangi for his efforts in making sure all was in place and last but not the least Jamila Mbarak who was at toes all throughout the event to assist at all times.
One of the rare IT/Technology-related events to be dominated by women!Women and Mozilla in Mombasa is indeed off to a great start!We are hoping to get more women involved in Mozilla projects and events!
We are still forming the WoMoz team here in Mombasa, if you are interested to join us in organizing programs, projects and events to improve women involvement in this field, just write to us on the mailing list or send an email to [email protected]
For direct access:
- WoMoz Website
- WoMoz on Facebook
- Presentation Slides
We plan to have our next meet-up to plan for a number of WoMoz related activities, structure of the organizing team and much more!
Check out Event Photos