Examples of Cisco's Network Academy (CNA) and other CSR programmes that relate to women

The CNA Iraqi initiative, of which 40% of graduates are women. The partnership between the United Nations Fund for Women (UNIFEM) and CNA in Africa, which is being piloted early this year. UNIFEM has allocated $27943 for the rollout of female focused IT Essentials Academies in Zimbabwe and Zambia. In Zimbabwe the project will be set up at an all-female university and a teacher training college and in Zambia classes will start in a teacher training college and an all female secondary school

CNA opened in Effat College, Jeddah, in September 2005 is supported at the highest level, by the Saudi royal family. Kerry Laufer, Vice Dean at Effat College believes that acquiring the right skills to enter the job market in a changing society will be increasingly important to Saudi women as we progress into the twenty first century

In May 2006 the first female Regional Academy was inaugurated in Lahore, Pakistan. One of the oldest female institutions in Pakistan, Lahore College for Women (LCW). Humaira Alvi, the Legal Main Contact at LCW, reports that the nature of work and demand for skills are changing in Pakistan and employment opportunities for women with IT skills are greater now than ever before.

Cisco Systems, Inc. and the Cisco Learning Institute (CLI), recognizing the current gender gap in the Information Technology (IT) field, partnered in April 2000 and developed the Gender Initiative project. This initiative seeks ways to increase females' access to IT training and career opportunities, beginning with the Cisco Networking Academy(tm) Program - see www.cisco.com/web/learning/netacad/digital_divide/gender/Initiative.html

The first Women's Empowerment Program (WEP) Academy in Israel.
WEP is an international training program, set up in 1999, that includes high technology training, personal empowerment, business training and social-communal empowerment for non-academic Jewish and Arab young women, aged 20-34, who belong to weaker groups in society.

The Women of Gemidiriya: Stories of Endeavor and Endurance
I flew in to Colombo expecting a weekend wrought with security uncertainties. It was three days before Sri Lanka would celebrate 60 years of independence and I was told rebel attacks in the capital were highly plausible. Just two weeks before, the government had withdrawn from a ceasefire with the country’s separatist rebels who had been waging war for 25 years.
Nevertheless, the field trip involving four buses carrying 75 delegates from the World Bank’s South Asia and Africa Regions and a few of us from Cisco, set out for our mission on the morning of Feb 1, flanked by security outriders and police vehicle escorts. We were about to learn firsthand of the quiet revolution that is taking place, driven largely by the country’s poorest communities, and of women whose families live below the threshold of 1 USD a day.
Read their story here.