The Islamic Development Bank has enhanced the added value of private sector activity in Suriname by improving the business and innovation climate, and stimulating knowledge in manufacturing and high-tech technological services.
What if you are a young woman excited to work in a field where you can't find any other women? Furthermore, what if you lack the financial resources to easily access the education needed to develop your skills? What if none of this stops you?
This is the story of Julie Sundar. The 26-year-old Surinamese pioneer, born in Guyana, was first drawn to information and communications technology (ICT) as a teenager, after seeing how artificial intelligence was being used in a TV crime drama series (Person of Interest).
After her family moved to Suriname, Sundar finished high school and worked in several stores until she found the opportunity to begin training in ICT. But as time went on, she felt like she wasn't making any progress, and began to wonder if she should switch to a different career. Then she met Theo Boomsma, co-founder of IT-Core, an association of professionals working to promote ICT innovation and training in Suriname. That was when she was volunteering to help develop a robotics engineering curriculum for kids, and when he heard about her concerns, he offered to become her mentor.
In 2014, Sundar assembled the first all-girls team to participate in the annual Suriname Hackathon. The team placed last in the competition. The following year, Sundar decided to recruit only males (alongside her) to form a team to compete in the country's Internet of Things Challenge, known as HackOmation.
While her team won this competition, the experience forced Sundar to confront the obstacles she would face as a woman in the field. “I faced a lot of challenges working with masters,” she recalls. “I was told that I should just pitch and not go into tech. It was like they saw me as a person to date instead of being taken seriously to lead a team. So, I felt very discouraged and wished there were more females in tech.” Information and communication.
In 2016, Sundar tracked down the young women who had participated in the 2014 hackathon and convinced them to join her again to compete in the same event. They developed an augmented reality customer experience app, and this time, they came first in the competition.
This experience led Sandar to discover her mission: to open the world of technology in Suriname to women. Two years later, she founded Codettes, an organization to provide girls and young women with ICT for career success. “The reason I started Codettes is because when I started in ICT, I knew nothing,” says Sundar. “I was the only female in the sector, and working with only males was very intimidating. But even though I had no background in ICT, I was able to accomplish a lot through hard work and having a mentor like Theo to guide me. I wanted to get involved “My experience with other women in ICT because I knew they felt the same way I did.”
“I was the only female in the industry, and it was very scary. I was able to accomplish a lot just by working hard.
I wanted to share my experience with other females because I knew they felt the same way I did.
FAB Academy Experience
The critical impetus for Sundar's mission came in 2019. As part of the Suriname Business Climate and Innovation Programme, the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) and Suriname sought to pilot a knowledge development initiative in high- and low-cost manufacturing and technology services. . The goal was to build on the country's previous experience in creating a “Fab Lab” where users can access digital manufacturing machines and software to develop projects.
The initiative sponsored Sander, along with six other young people from Suriname, to participate in the 2019 Fab Academy, an intensive, interdisciplinary 5-month program that teaches students how to conceptualize, design, and create prototypes using digital fabrication tools and machines provided by the MIT Bits Center. And atoms.
Throughout the program, the seven fellows underwent rigorous training in the laboratory, under the supervision of Fab Academy founder Professor Neil Gershenfeld. Each fellow had to complete a final project, which was presented virtually to MIT faculty at the Amazon Meeting on Digital Fabrication held in June 2019.
Sundar's latest Fab Academy project, “Green Tubes,” consists of a platform that allows remote monitoring of farms in Suriname, through a machine she built using sensors, microcontrollers and a mobile phone app. Gershenfeld praised her project.
According to Michael Hennessy, IDB Sector Specialist in the Competitiveness, Technology and Innovation Division, “The Fab Academy program provided a unique opportunity for participants in Suriname to gain hands-on experience working with digital fabrication tools, and to learn while building projects that were of particular interest to each of them.”
He adds: “As a result of this experience, we hope that they will be able to continue to develop innovative projects, collaborate with other Fab Labs in the region, and transfer their knowledge and experience locally, so that digital manufacturing technologies can be a catalyst for local development. Skill development and technology projects.”
Sundar, who lives in Paramaribo, the capital of Suriname, certainly belongs to this mindset. For her, the Fab Academy was a surprise: the model allowed projects to be managed remotely and provided valuable experience that she could pass on to those who could not afford such training. Women and girls quickly became the beneficiaries, fulfilling the mission she had set for herself.
The future of ICT is feminine
“The whole Fab Academy thing is what we're doing now, just extended longer [as her students usually start with less experience]“My courses are distributed in the same way – we teach students online and ask them to come to the lab to do specific projects,” says Sundar. The skills I learned from Fab Academy such as 3D design, 3D production, working with lasers and machines, and how to build solutions, are what I teach them.”
Her mentor Theo Boomsma also benefited from the Fab Academy experience, as his organization leads the lab in which fellows ran their projects. A strong supporter of Codettes, he also plans to boost the country's tech growth by expanding his own programs, similar to the Fab Academy.
Meanwhile, success continues to come for the Codettes. Interns and graduates from the Bootcamp and Inno Starter programs recently won first and second place at the 2021 Caribbean Girls Hackathon and are landing jobs in the Internet of Things thanks to their newly acquired skills.
Sundar is now looking forward to earning his bachelor's degree while expanding Codettes nationally and regionally. “My way of thinking with them is that it's not just about winning, it's about continuing to develop your skills and build your CV, so when you apply for jobs, you can choose what suits you well and stands out,” she says.
For his part, Boomsma believes Sundar has sparked a movement that is now unstoppable.
“These girls should be told that they can do this, it is not for men,” he says. “That's basically what she did, and she's an example of that. We're now seeing a lot of girls moving into ICT, which is very beneficial for the sector.”
To learn more about the rise of coding bootcamps and the future of digital skills, click here.
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