More than 700 girls and young women from across the Caribbean logged on and gath­ered at ICT ac­cess cen­tres in Trinidad and To­ba­go for this year’s Tech4Girls: Make AI Work for You work­shop, a re­gion­al ini­tia­tive aimed at ex­pand­ing fe­male par­tic­i­pa­tion in ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence and dig­i­tal in­dus­tries.

The two-day work­shop, which was held ahead of In­ter­na­tion­al Girls in ICT Day on April 23, brought to­geth­er par­tic­i­pants from The Ba­hamas, Guyana, Bar­ba­dos, St Lu­cia and Trinidad and To­ba­go. Host­ed vir­tu­al­ly and across 17 Ac­cessTT ICT ac­cess cen­tres by the Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Au­thor­i­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go, the pro­gramme com­bined tech­ni­cal train­ing with ses­sions on lead­er­ship, dig­i­tal brand­ing and per­son­al de­vel­op­ment.

Or­gan­is­ers said the scale of par­tic­i­pa­tion re­flect­ed a grow­ing re­gion­al fo­cus on build­ing a stronger pipeline of fe­male tal­ent in emerg­ing tech­nolo­gies. Aligned with the glob­al theme, “AI for De­vel­op­ment- Girls Shap­ing the Dig­i­tal Fu­ture,” par­tic­i­pants were in­tro­duced to ad­vanced AI con­cepts, in­clud­ing Re­trieval-Aug­ment­ed Gen­er­a­tion (RAG), and en­cour­aged to ap­ply them to re­al-world chal­lenges in their schools and com­mu­ni­ties.

In­dus­try pro­fes­sion­als from across the re­gion led the ses­sions, in­clud­ing Min­is­ter of Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion and Ar­ti­fi­cial In­tel­li­gence Sen­a­tor the Ho­n­ourable Do­minic Smith, Caribbean As­so­ci­a­tion of Na­tion­al Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Or­gan­i­sa­tions op­er­a­tions and HR man­ag­er Lianne Di­ef­fen­thaller, To­ba­go In­for­ma­tion Tech­nol­o­gy Ltd Busi­ness Ser­vices man­ag­er Ali­cia Davis Guer­ra, and TSTT man­ag­er of Net­work Plan­ning and De­sign Neiala Kissoon-Lind­say.

”In his fea­ture ad­dress, Min­is­ter Smith said in­creas­ing women’s par­tic­i­pa­tion in tech­nol­o­gy would help shape a more in­clu­sive dig­i­tal fu­ture. “When more women con­tribute to the de­sign and de­vel­op­ment of AI, tech be­comes more in­clu­sive,” he said. “Your pres­ence at the ta­ble is a pow­er­ful one. You will shape im­por­tant out­comes, in­flu­ence de­ci­sions, and de­fine the fu­ture we are try­ing to build out of the Min­istry. As a na­tion, we will con­tin­ue to in­vest in the dig­i­tal em­pow­er­ment of women, sup­port women who lead the tech progress of the coun­try.”

Par­tic­i­pants al­so en­gaged in ses­sions on en­tre­pre­neur­ship, brand­ing and dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing, and will re­ceive cer­tifi­cates along with con­tin­ued ac­cess to dig­i­tal learn­ing re­sources.