Django is a free, open-access website development platform, written in the programming language Python,  which helps users develop websites quickly and easily.

Members of the female user community decided to encourage women without any computing experience to use the platform via free programming workshops - and that’s how Django Girls were born. The workshops are designed and organised on a purely voluntary basis. In the evening of Thursday 22 April 2021 and for the whole day on Saturday 24 April 2021, CERN organised its own 100%-virtual Django Girls workshop, open to girls and women aged 15 and above. 

In her welcoming word addressed to the participants, Director-General Fabiola Gianotti noted that “The scarcity of women in IT is a waste of human capital”.

This year, 45 enthusiastic novices were formed into small groups and guided by 17 CERN mentors – all working in the field of IT – through the creation of a blog and its publication on the Web. The vast majority of the participants were locally based and a total of 11 nationalities were represented. 

The volunteers all went the extra mile to help the Django Girls, who themselves displayed all determination and concentration needed to get the most from distance learning. “This has really helped open up channels for my future, I am so pleased to have had the opportunity to take part in this activity”, noted one of the participants.

The Django Girls workshop was organised this year to mark the International Girls in ICT Day(ICT = information and communication technologies) and was led by three CERN teams, the Women in Technology community, the Visitor and Events Operations section, and the CERN MicroClub.

 Let’s hope the event spurred these girls and women into taking a closer look at the world of computing.