IEEE Women in Engineering STAR Program Challenge

Our 'HerAcademia' project began with the data collection phase. Firstly, we visited a shoe factory where rural female workers shared their perspectives on education access, gender inequalities, and workplace issues. Simultaneously, we visited a junior high school attended by rural students to explore with their teachers the educational challenges and assess the overall quality of the educational system. To conclude the research phase, we visited a high school where we shared our findings, organized team activities to brainstorm solutions, and ultimately developed an innovative platform to address these challenges.

During the platform creation phase, we developed our 'Sara' chatbot simulation and designed a secure metaverse game specifically for rural girls to network and access courses ranging from elementary to university engineering levels. We also created a dedicated page for artistic endeavors like music, integrated healthcare and entrepreneurship programs, and launched an illiteracy eradication initiative on the platform.

Returning to the high school, we conducted workshops on HTML, JavaScript, and CSS to develop the platform's homepage. We included a magazine featuring successful Tunisian rural women stories and a manga illustrating the negative consequences of cultural barriers to combat illiteracy. Additionally, we engaged with the Mahras rural women association, introducing them to our platform during the Coffee Talk R8 program. We discussed our solution, distributed magazines for sustainability, and conducted workshops on healthcare and entrepreneurship mindsets.

To increase awareness among females, we created Arabic-language reels addressing topics such as work, entrepreneurship, and illiteracy, which were shared across multiple platforms. Finally, we visited an elementary school where the reception was incredibly positive, with students showing great enthusiasm and actively engaging with the platform.