Tuesday, August 21, 2012

Article: What I Know About Sisters Now That I'm in my 50s

And continuing the series in Huffington Post, here is another installment. This one exploring what the writer, Barbara Hannah Grufferman, has discovered about having a sister in her 50-something years.

Tuesday, August 07, 2012

Blog Find: Sporty Afros

New discovery!!!!!!

In the firestorm of "Oh no! She diin't"-type comments that ensued from disparaging comments made last week on Twitter about the US gymnast and gold medalist Gabby Douglas, I discovered the blog Sporty Afros.

The tagline says it all: Where sports and hair collide.

Sporty Afros’ mission is to establish a social platform for fitness and effective hair care for black women.

Sporty Afros seeks to be a one stop shop for questions, discussions, tips and answers about living an active lifestyle in conjunction with establishing and maintaining healthy hair regimens.

My new plan is to stay off the extension braids and pay more attention to my hair. I read a post on Black Girl Long Hair a couple of months ago, which highlighted some important reasons to limit our use of extensions.

Key among them was that we tend to neglect our hair when it's in braids. However, braids or not, weaves or not, our hair still needs to be washed, conditioned and moisturised - steps that are all too easy to neglect when we have extensions in.

However, if you exercise regularly and sweat, you'll be confronted with the question of how to look good while working out and even more importantly after you work out.

Sporty Afros addresses these concerns and more. Although I don't remember seeing any explicit statements that the hair care tips were for natural hair, the "afros" in the name seems to imply this.

Monday, August 06, 2012

Now On! The 5th W.TEC Girls Technology Camp

What a long way W.TEC has come.....

On Friday, we received our latest batch of girls for this year's Technology Camp.

The W.TEC Girls Technology Camp is an initiative aimed at helping secondary school students develop technology literacy skills and gain an awareness of career options related to technology, science and engineering. The long-term goal is to increase the numbers of women working with and using information technology productively for professional and leadership activities.

During the camp, the girls participate in technology workshops and leadership activities. Evaluations of previous camps show enhanced leadership skills; creativity; and problem-solving and communication abilities in the girls as a result of attending the camp.

The camp's uniqueness lies in it's girls-only design. The camp is also a residential programme and for the 2-week duration of the camp, 30 girls live and learn about the exciting opportunities that information technology presents for learning, working and living in the 21st century.

Stay tuned for updates from the camp and check out photographs from last year's camp.

Anita Borg Change Agent Award Winners Announced

The Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology today announced the winners of the Change Agent awards. The winners will be be honored at the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing later this year.

Anita Borg Change Agent Awards: Dr. Ramalatha Marimuthu, Professor and Head of Department, Kumaraguru College of Technology; Maria Dubovitskaya, pre-doctoral researcher at IBM Research - Zurich and Ph.D. candidate at ETH Zurich; and Evelyn Namara, Program Coordinator at Solar Sister.

I won the Change Agent award in 2009 and it was a wonderful honour and gave me the opportunity to attend the Grace Hopper Celebration for Women in Computing, which was an exciting and encouraging event for any technical or aspiring technical woman.

The other award announced include the Anita Borg Social Impact Award, which goes to Cathi Rodgveller, Founder and coordinator of IGNITE (Inspiring Girls Now In Technology Evolution) and Nontraditional Career Counselor at Seattle Public Schools.

I had the pleasure to speak at a program organised by the Nigerian chapter of IGNITE. The importance of female mentors cannot be over-emphasised and this meet-up with girls from selected secondary schools confirmed this. The other speaker and I were bombarded with questions.

Visit the Anita Borg website to learn about the other award winners.

The Anita Borg Institute seeks to: 1.) Increase the impact of women on all aspects of technology, and 2.) Increase the positive impact of technology on the world’s women.