evidoria

← Back to browse

Good practice Imported

AI Skills Accelerator for Girls — Astana Hub's ITU-EY AI Fundamentals Workshop

Kazakhstan · Astana · See the Kazakhstan profile · See the Astana profile

Evidence: Descriptive / self-reported Top 70% 40/100 · Ask Evidence Copilot about this practice

Kazakhstan became one of the first six countries in the ITU–EY 'AI Skills Accelerator for Girls' programme, hosting a 3-day AI fundamentals workshop at Astana Hub — prompt engineering, chatbot-building and AI ethics — opened by the Digital Development Minister in February 2025.

6 countries
Countries in the ITU-EY 'AI Skills Accelerator for Girls' first cohort (2024-2025)
13 workshops
Workshops held in the first cohort (2024-2025)
470+ participants
Total participants reached across the first cohort (2024-2025)
1,000+ girls and young women
Programme target across all 12 countries
AI Skills Accelerator for Girls — Astana Hub's ITU-EY AI Fundamentals Workshop

Details

Maturity
Pilot
Promoter
ITU & EY (with Kazakhstan Ministry of Digital Development, Innovations and Aerospace Industry / Astana Hub)
Period
5-7 February 2025
Keywords
AI education, digital skills, gender equality

Context

The 'AI Skills Accelerator for Girls' is a two-year programme run by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) in partnership with EY, aiming to train over 1,000 girls and young women in AI skills across 12 countries. Its first cohort (2024–2025) covered six countries — Kenya, Malta, Paraguay, Kazakhstan, Jordan and India — through 13 workshops reaching 470+ participants in total.

Activities

In Kazakhstan, the workshop ran 5–7 February 2025 at Astana Hub, opened by Minister of Digital Development, Innovations and Aerospace Industry Zhaslan Madiyev, with ITU CIS Regional Director Natalia Mochu joining online. The curriculum covered AI fundamentals, basic neural-network concepts, large language models (including prompt design), AI ethics — bias, privacy, deepfakes — and hands-on chatbot- and image-generation exercises led by volunteer EY professionals.

Results

Outcomes were assessed through participant surveys, which reported improved technical confidence and increased interest in further study or careers in technology.

Conclusions

No independent evaluation, control group or long-term follow-up has been published, and Kazakhstan-specific attendance figures were not disclosed — only the cohort-wide total of 470+ participants across all 13 first-cohort workshops.

Implementation
Indicative cost
Low (< €50k)
Time to results
Short (< 1 year)
Staffing & skills
ITU (International Telecommunication Union), EY volunteer professionals, Kazakhstan Ministry of Digital Development, Innovations and Aerospace Industry, Astana Hub

Conditions for success

  • Ministerial-level opening lending national visibility and legitimacy
  • Volunteer EY professionals delivering hands-on technical content
  • Part of a structured multi-country ITU-EY programme with a defined curriculum

Common failure modes

  • Only self-reported survey outcomes published; no independent evaluation, control group or long-term follow-up
  • Kazakhstan-specific attendance figures not disclosed

Commonly funded by

ESF+ — European Social Fund Plus Digital Europe Programme Philanthropic / foundation funding

Indicative funding routes for practices of this type — always check each programme's current calls and eligibility rules.

Do you run this practice? Claim it — verified implementers get a public contact pathway and can propose corrections.

Data sources

Where this practice's information was retrieved from, and when.

Attachments

Similar practices you may find useful