New Telegraph

Bridge seeks policies, initiatives to promote girl-child science career

Bridge Nigeria has said that female participation in science, especially at the early stage of their education, which is exacerbated by gender disparities in the education systems, needed to be addressed by new policies, initiatives and mechanisms to support women and girls in science.

 

This was as it said that Bridge community schools had invigorated efforts to bridge the gap in science education of Nigerian girl-child with introduction of a science curriculum, learning materials, classroom experiments and low cost schools for parents in some of the most impoverished communities in the country.

 

Bridge Nigeria, a network of nursery and primary schools that serve low-income communities across Lagos and Osun State disclosed this during the commemoration of this year’s International Day of Women and Girls in Science with science lessons that allow children, particularly girl-child to explore, experiment and to be inspired in science.

 

The theme of this year’s 2021 International Day of Women and Girls in Science, as espoused by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) was: “Women Scientists at the Forefront of the Fight Against COVID-19,” which reinforced how the pandemic has shown the critical role of women researchers in different stages of the fight against the virus starting from advancing the knowledge on the virus, to developing techniques for testing, and creating the vaccine against the virus.

 

Therefore, the Bridge community schools’ science curriculum, the organisation added ensures appropriate age for basic science and technology lessons in order to encourage and inspire pupils, particularly girls to explore career choices in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM).

 

“Bridge community schools actively pursue science opportunities such as our partnership with Code Lagos in their ambition to teach one million Lagosians to code, through which some of our girls experienced eight weeks coding training course with PYLadies, an international mentorship organisation for women in coding, which led to one of our pupils, Sophia Irozuru, receiving a standing ovation at the PyCon global conference where she was guest speaker on her experience learning to code,” the Bridge Nigeria said.

 

According to a statement by Bridge Nigeria, is the need to encourage girl-child to embrace career in science given the critical role women researchers played in different stages of the fight against COVID-19 from advancing the knowledge on the virus, to developing techniques for testing, and to create vaccine against the virus.

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