The Association of Professional Women Engineers of Nigeria (APWEN), a non profit organisation, has trained over five hundred ‘500’ female engineers in secondary school to boost participation of young girls in the engineering field across the Federal Capital Territory.
Speaking during workshop for female engineers, in Abuja, the President of APWEN, Engr. Funmilola Ojelade, said that the aim of the workshop is to build the capacity of female engineer to have passion of sciences from junior secondary school across the country.
She noted that APWEN initiative program is a division of Nigeria Society of Engineers and sponsored by Royal Academy of Engineering in partnership with the University of West of Scotland in UK as part of its mission to promote the study of science.
She said, “We are just about 13% of the engineering work force of women and we as women, the only thing we can do is to help other girls to become like us in field of engineering, so that at least we can get to a point where we can have 50% men and 50% women who are engineers in Nigeria.
“Because the population of women is high, that is why we are focusing on the training of young female engineers because we are women too,” she said.
In her remarks, the immediate past President of APWEN, Engr. Felicia Agubata said, “We want to ensure that we have more females who will be willing to take up sciences that will lead them to a career in engineering.
“We also want to have many engineers as possible in the next 12 to 15 years because we know that science is life and engineers are problem solvers. With more engineers, we will be able to solve science problem,” she said.
However, same of the young engineers received scholarship and support during the ‘Sheengineer Invent It, Build It Students Workshop and Competition’, by Association of Professional Women Engineers of Nigeria.