Debswana Encourages Women To Apply For WomEng Fellowship

Pauline Dikuelo | Monday August 3, 2020 12:39

 

Debswana Encourages Women To Apply For WomEng Fellowship

The programme develops leadership, innovation, employability and well-being skills required by young graduates to succeed in the engineering industry and beyond.

“As part of Debswana’s partnership with De Beers Group and WomEng, and with an objective to realise goal number five of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG's) on gender equality, we have implemented a series of activities to progress a three-year Girl/Women in Engineering programme,” said Debswana in a statement. 

WomEng is focused on encouraging more women to study STEM subjects, thereby providing them with a wider range of career opportunities and enabling the creation of a diverse engineering workforce to meet the current and future employment needs of the sector and economy at large.

As part of the programme, Debswana last year kick-started a series of sessions designed to create awareness of the importance of STEM subjects and provide students with practical tools and routes to access engineering and technology careers. The first of these sessions was held in Jwaneng with 200 female students from four Junior Secondary Schools in and around the mining town.

The students from Morama, Kgosi Mpe, Maokane and Mogale Junior Secondary Schools were taken through various sessions, with the aim to take them on a journey into the world of engineering and technology. They were also given first-hand experiences by Jwaneng Mine’s women engineers.

De Beers has invested more than US$300,000 (about P3million) in the partnership with WomEng, a multi-award-winning organisation working to attract, develop and retain the pipeline of female engineering talent.

Founded in South Africa in 2006, WomEng works internationally, developing targeted programmes and interventions to address the severe shortage of women in engineering. Beyond the focus on increasing the numbers through their proactive and needs driven approach, WomEng programming is creating the next generation of female engineering leaders in society.