PWiC 2022 - Year in Review
PWiC 2022 Annual Report
Pakistani Women in Computing (PWiC) is a global community of Pakistani women in technology fields and their allies. It was created to empower, celebrate, mentor, and provide opportunities for the community. PWiC has been operating globally for 3 years now and is a registered 501c3 (tax exempt) non-profit in the USA.
PWiC was initiated as a Facebook community in 2015, and in 2018 it was transformed into a global initiative. This year (2022) was our third operational year as a tax exempt (501c3) status.
In 2022, we saw a return to in-person events, new chapters opening up as well as a revival of local chapter communities. We connected with various new communities around the globe, learnt from new mentors that we onboarded, and grew the community membership worldwide.
Special thanks to the 2022 PWiC Board, and Leadership team for making a continued impact in 2022!
PWiC Vision
Our vision is to find ways to enable our community to Connect, Learn and Grow Together.
2022 Accomplishments
- Global Community Outreach: 15000 followers
- Grants & Awards: Webex Grant by CISCO, Google Ads Grant, AnitaB Systers Pass it On Award, Microsoft for Non Profits, Google for Non Profits
- Raised 40K USD in various fund raising efforts
- International Women’s Day Conference (virtual)
- PakTechSummit Silicon Valley (in-person)
- Media Coverage: Fox 5 News, Deutsche Welle (DW Urdu), Tareek-e-Watan, Pakistan Television(PTV), Dunya News, Sky 743
- Scholarships funded: 5 Women sponsored via PWiC for technical training workshops
- Global Events: 50
- Global Event Attendance: 3000 (in-person & virtual)
- Global Volunteers: 100+
- New Chapters Started: European Union (EU), DC/Maryland/Virginia (DMV), Faisalabad
Grants & Awards
Thank you Cisco for it’s WebEx donation for the third year to PWiC. This donation helps us enable connections and stay connected to the community. Learn more about Cisco Corporate Social Responsibility programs
We also won the AnitaB org Systers Pass it On Award for our getHired efforts. Systers is an AnitaB.org community founded to support “sisters in the system,” it is the world’s largest email community of women, with over 8,500 members from more than 65 countries in technical computing roles
We also acquired the Google for NonProfits grant as well as the Google Ads Grant.
Global Programs
This year we continued to support our existing programs via Learning Workshops, Mentoring, Student ambassador program as well as our annual GetHired event.
We also added two new programs to our list. We started an entrepreneurship track where we connect women led startups to mentors in Silicon Valley for advice and guidance. We also co-hosted the PakTechSummit in Silicon Valley with our long time partners Ejad Labs. The event brought investors and startups together and featured great speakers who gave advise to upcoming businesses.
We also started a scholarships program to fund various technical up skilling programs (CaterpillHERS freelance cohort) as well as starting a scholarship program to fund college degrees for women in need in Pakistan. We are looking forward to expanding this as we grow our funding.
GetHired 2022
This year marked out 3rd year of GetHired — an all inclusive virtual hiring event. This year’s event focused on the North America region (US and Canada). We partnered with fellow Syster communities from AnitaB to ensure diverse candidates got a chance to participate in the event. Notably Indian Women in Computing, Black Women in Computing, Chinese Women in Computing and Nepali Women in Computing. AnitaB.org also advertised the event on their platform and mailing lists.
Despite the recent recession and hiring freezes, we were able to get 10 notable hiring companies on board and 105 unique roles advertised for the event. In addition to the hiring companies, we also started a learning track (certifications and courses) which featured Goggle Cloud and Cisco learning platforms. The event was well attended and had over 600 applicants for the roles on our hiring portal. We were happy that the female participation in the event was 55%.
In the future we are hoping to scale this event by partnering with companies individually, and hosting company specific hiring events. This will allow us to spread the hiring events through out the year and will also allow us to serve multiple regions.
Campus Ambassador Program
The campus program empowers students to create a change in their local communities. This year the program was modified to include campus leads and campus ambassadors.
Hand-picked for a year commitment, campus leads are mentored by PWiC global leads as they start and run societies and programs in their schools. Campus leads and campus ambassadors are encouraged not only to create a link between a school and the local PWiC chapter but create a local network that any student can tap into.
Together, these burgeoning communities conduct a variety of events that foster an inclusive environment whilst giving students the tools to grow into future leaders. This year, the campus program has appointed 18 new leads and ambassadors from unique institutions, 83% of which are currently founding or running a computing-centered organization. Learn more about the program here: https://github.com/pakistani-women-in-computing/pwic-campus-ambassador-guidelines
Global Partnerships
This year we partnered with a range of commnuties worldwide for our various events through out the year. We are very thankful for these communities and their continued support and collaboration. We hope to foster more growth and community outreach in the coming years.
For new partnership requests please email partnerships@pwic.org
Women’s History Month Celebrations
The team participated in this year’s BreakTheBias themed women’s day celebrations. We held 17 events in March (11 virtual events for IWD Techmakers collaboration, 5 in-person meetups — Seattle, Silicon Valley, Berlin, Karachi, and 1 conference booth at FutureFest).
We also held our first two-day Women’s Day Conference virtually, in collaboration with Google Women TechMakers Toronto. The conference featured female industry leaders and discussions on the current hot tech topics.
PakTechSummit Silicon Valley 2022
This year we also co-hosted the PakTechSummit in Silicon Valley’s Computer History Museum, with our long term allies and partners Ejad Labs. The goal of the event was to connect entrepreneurs from Pakistan to investors and advisors in Silicon Valley. The event consisted of a full day of conference talks and discussions.
The PWiC President — Novaira Masood, also signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with Khyber Pakhtunkhwa(KPK) IT Board Government to collaborate on up-skilling, re-skilling, mentoring and hiring of women in technology hailing from KPK. This is a huge step forward in creating local impact in Pakistan. The KPK region was underserved in the past but right now it is goldmine of inclusive innovation through digital transformation, digital inclusion and digital literacy focused initiatives. This collaboration that will open more opportunities for learning and growth for women hailing from the region.
Grace Hopper Conference
The PWiC team attended the Grace Hopper Celebration in Orlando this year. We had in-person attendance as well as online participation for our team.
We hosted a Systers meetup for the Pakistani Women in Tech community as well as a dinner for the attendees. This year we have launched new initiatives for partnerships with fellow Syster communities and hope to collaborate more in the future to widen our impact.
Onwards and Upwards
As we return to a post pandemic working environment, we are hopeful that our in-person networking and events will be even more productive in 2023. We have exciting new chapters opening up worldwide and we hope to continue to sustain this growth and spread our community values globally.
If you would like to donate to PWiC, please visit our website: https://pwic.org/ to make a donation. We are a volunteer run non-profit organization and all funds are used to help advance women in technology worldwide.
