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Girls' Empowerment Through Technovation in Pakistan

466 girls from different cities, school systems and colleges are working on their Artificial Intelligence (AI) models to solve problems related to Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in Pakistan.

25 August 2020

Last update:20 April 2023

UNESCO in collaboration with has launched an online 5-week free training on AI for girls aged 10 -18 years in six countries including Pakistan. Since the inception of the programme from 27 July 2020, it is replete with many opportunities for girls to understand and identify problems in their communities and explore data with a solution to rectify the problems through the development of their own AI models.

It is a self-paced programme, where girls alone and in teams attend the weekly sessions, participate in discussions and complete their assigned tasks delivered through google classrooms. A group of mentors from technology-based industries helps students with their questions, concerns, comments and provides them feedback on their assignments. To encourage students to have more urge for learning, students are given prizes each week on completion of their timely tasks especially to those who come up with novel ideas to solve their community problems.

In Pakistan, 466 girls from different levels with a diverse background have enrolled themselves in the programme. Students find the course modalities very interesting, informative and thrilling along with exploring the AI around them. This led the girls to have a firm belief in themselves that they can develop their own AI models to resolve their identified issues. A student of the course expressed her views:

The lessons are informative coupled with few challenges but we are determined to practice simulation exercises to get over challenges.

Hina Khurram

The contents and learning opportunities of the course are helping students to identify, choose and resolve their community issues through developing a tailored AI model. Some girls have selected different SDGs as their priority areas to work on for their AI including hunger and food security, education and gender equity, health care facilities, child mortality, water scarcity, environmental pollution, deforestation, cyber-bullying, child-trafficking, kidnapping, and animal rights, etc. Some girls have chosen to develop AI models on innovative problems like helping children to deal with boredom; a girl is interested to develop to help children and people with mental disorders to find their homes with the location of their shoes. Another one wants to develop phone apps to help people with grocery shopping with ease and minimal time. The list carries on. An active student wants to work on reducing hunger and food wastage. She believes, there are inequalities in the distribution of food around the world. A lot of food wastes in different ways and forms, which can be saved and served to the poor and needy.

I would like to solve the world’s hunger, probably one of the most demanding issues the world confronts with. Here is my proposed solution, we can use AI to reduce food wastage with the help of the machines with sensors, the same can be consumed rather than going to the trash.

Anusha Shehzad

Another conscious young girl is concerned about the health facilities in the country. She wants to ensure proper and timely detection of diseases and easy access to health facilities.

My problem is health care. The solution I have decided on is to make an app, which will help predict if a person is not feeling well. If it is a serious health problem or one needs immediate attention the app can call the hospital or emergency.

Haajrah Nadeem

My problem is global warming. I want to reduce the rise in temperatures in the world through her AI model. I want to make a device that could calculate the amount of greenhouse gases in the air around each country. This would inform each country of how much they contribute to the CO2 in the air, and how much of a reduction they need to make. Once that is known, the individual factors (vehicles, fossil fuels) can be looked at and decided as to how much of each needs to be reduced. Through this method, countries can get and achieve their own targets.

Udaya Pandit

Others have decided to work on developing an AI translation model, which could help non-English speakers to learn and communicate in English.

I want to train my model through maximum data that can help students and youth to learn English, commented on a student of the class.

Amna Kamran.

Participants appreciate the efforts of UNESCO and Technovation to introduce this course for them. They are of the view that through this course they have a chance to explore their abilities and interest in AI.