Women In Blockchain Asia (WIBA) is proud to announce the first cohort of its women centric blockchain programmers course in seven universities in Malaysia. Partnering with REACH and backed by Algorand Foundation, the world’s leading blockchain protocol,; WIBA aims to “curate” more female blockchain coders and developers in Malaysia.

Coined the “WIBA Algorand REACH Smart Contract Training” this program is free to all university students of participating universities and will run over a course of two months. The Universities participating in this course are; Asia Pacific University, Universiti Malaysia Kelantan, Universiti Sains Malaysia, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, Universiti Tunku Abdul Rahman, Raffles College of Higher Education and Universiti Malaysia Sabah.

So far, close to 150 students have signed up to this course. 

“Since our launch in May, we have been busy creating linkages domestically in Malaysia and regionally, to further the cause of increasing the participation of women in blockchain technology. Collectively we believe the future is in our younger generation, hence this initiative is our first,” said Ida Mok, President of WIBA. Mok added that education is one of the key pillars for WIBA

“We realised that very few women signed up to hackathons or competitive coding engagements which means they missed out from the important training that normally comes with these engagements. As such and to ensure that more women participate in this, we at WIBA have put in place certain positive and affirmative actions in our programs to which we are proud to state that more than 50% of students who signed up are female.” added Ida.

“This is the first ever initiative in Malaysia focussed on increasing the number of female blockchain builders in Malaysia, and we are excited by the response we have had thus far. The program will involve online tutorials and discussions, followed by an inter-varsity hackathon at the end of the course,” added Ivy Fung, a founding member of WIBA spearheading this initiative. 

It is expected that similar programs will be rolled out in other countries, once more regional linkages are in place.  At the moment, WIBA has a chapter in Singapore, with initiatives towards setting up similar chapters in other countries underway.