Tonga Women in ICT thriving in the ‘new normal’

Covid-19 has put events to a pause, but the virtual online community has become the busiest platform in our Kingdom today.

Prior to the Covid pandemic, Tonga Women in ICT and ICDP Pacific Connect have been working hand in hand with various training workshops and exchange ideas. So far, the events we have held with ICDP include:

• September 2019 – 2 members from TWICT attended the ICDP Pacific Connect Ideas Exchange in Sydney, Australia.

• Nov 2019 – Tonga Dialogue ‘Digital Solutions to Local Challenges’ convened with the assistance of Tonga Women in ICT Group.
• May 2020 – Pacific Connect contracted Common Code to deliver Coding Workshops for the Tongan community – 12 participants (7 women). Participants learnt to code with Python & Django and develop personal/business projects by applying the lessons.
• June 2020 – Tonga participants in Storytelling & Digital Media Dialogue
• July 2020 – Digital Agriculture Across the Pacific.
• September 2020 – Tonga hosted hub for ICDP Pacific Connect Annual Ideas Exchange. Tonga Hub exchange ideas for various projects in the near future
• November 2020 – Opportunity for Tonga Women in ICT & the Tongan community to participate in Mentoring for Growth training in Nov 2020. Training with Insight Collective Group.
• December 2020 – Supporting Women in Business – Using Technology to make your side hustle a success (sustainable business)

Today online events are the biggest hit and it’s highly interactive when people come together online and learn, participate and interact virtually.

ICDP has been supporting Tonga Women in ICT with virtual online training sessions, Sharing dialogues and many more. Here the members build and upskill themselves and have shared these training sessions with friends and co-workers amongst others.

All virtual training courses in 2020 were a great success. The majority were pilot sessions here in Tonga. Over 30 different pupils sat in on a live dialogue and shared their stories with others in the region including Fiji, Samoa, PNG, Solomons, Australia and other countries.

On behalf of all the participants in Tonga most especially from Tonga Women in ICT, I would like to say Thank you Team ICDP for all the great opportunities thus far, and I’m looking forward to many more.

Cheers for the rest of 2020.

Happy Holidays from Tonga!

Malo Aupito