Cape Town Global Shapers is a registered NPO and forms part of the Global Shapers Community , also referred to as Global Shapers.
This community is an initiative of the World Economic Forum and is described as "a network of inspiring young people under the age of 30 working together to address local, regional and global challenges". There are at present, more than 7 000 Global Shapers in 156 countries with 381 city-based hubs.
At the World Economic Forum (WEF) in 2018 Procter and Gamble announced a partnership with the Global Shapers Community to accelerate progress toward gender equality, which has inspired their global #WeSeeEqual campaign.
All Global Shaper Community hubs were invited to submit proposals to Procter and Gamble detailing how they would address gender inequality in their respective communities. This partnership with Procter & Gamble included a CHF100 000 (about R1.4m) grant challenge where only five winning proposals would be awarded CHF20 000 each to implement their project in their city.
Having submitted a project proposal with a programme named LadiesInTech to Procter and Gamble, the Cape Town Hub was named as one of the five winners of the grant challenge in September 2018 at the headquarters of the World Economic Forum in Geneva, Switzerland.
To address the fact that women are greatly under-represented in the tech industry in South Africa, the Cape Town Hub's LadiesInTech project aims to train and empower 40 unemployed young women with digital and business skills.
Working together with organisations such as Dream Factory Foundation, Silulo Ulutho Technologies and The Social Makeover, a blended learning approach will ensure participants also learn critical professional and personal development skills to increase their career options and access to employment and business opportunities in this sector.
The Cape Town Global Shapers officially announced that applications are open for the LadiesInTech 2019 programme and have promoted it as a 12-month scholarship which will allow 40 Cape Town based unemployed young ladies to be exposed to the technology industry and provide them with various skills.
The scholarship is open to unemployed woman between the ages of 19 and 24 who have limited to no experience with computers. The ladies need to be eager to learn computer literacy, digital intelligence and business and problem-solving skills as at the end of the programme they would have completed an accredited end user computer course from Silulo Ulutho Technologies, a business and job readiness course from Dream Factory Foundation and a personal mastery and digital intelligence course from The Social Makeover.
After completion of the courses, a critical component of this scholarship will endeavour to provide the successful applicants in job immersions in the Technology sector in order to give the ladies work experience as well.
To apply for the #LadiesInTech Scholarship, eligible ladies are asked to send a 1 to 2 minute WhatsApp video explaining why they deserve to be one of the #LadiesInTech to 063 730 7403.
Applications close on January 15 2019 and the programme is set to start towards the end of the month in Makhaza, Khayelitsha.
For more information see here.
For more information on the Cape Town Hub see here.