When Hanane Ait Dabel started college to earn her computer science degree, she wanted to find a community. “My first year at university, I was looking for that place where I belonged,” she says. Hanane, who lives in Morocco, found that in Women Techmakers. “I really liked the atmosphere. They made technology easier to learn, so I decided to join.”

Today Hanane works as a project coordinator handling technical support for web hosting. She’s also working on her second undergraduate degree in economics — and has stayed involved in Women Techmakers, now as an ambassador.

As an ambassador, she’s had the opportunity to lead #IamRemarkable workshops — hosting them in English, Arabic and French, no less. Currently, Hanane and a group of other Women Techmaker ambassadors are planning International Women’s Day 2022 in Morocco. Hanane had some time to take a break from all this work to tell us a little about herself, and why she’s remained so active in Women Techmakers.

What sort of things were you interested in learning when you were young?

I remember as a kid, my mother was always telling me to bring my books and sit with her and study. She wasn’t able to attend school, so she always encouraged me to pursue my dreams and emphasized the importance of studying. And my father introduced me to business; he would invite me to work in the store he owned, and I learned so much there. I’ve always been fascinated by business and technology. My mother still loves to listen to me talk about these things, and she gets excited about events I’m involved in.

What led you to tech?

In high school, I had the difficult decision of choosing between a technology and a business program. With my family’s support, I chose computer science. The program was hosted at a university in another city, and I wanted to be on my own and be independent. Many of my friends’ families encouraged them to stay home and study business at the city university. I’m grateful that my family supported my decision.

After I earned my computer science degree, if I wanted to continue studying engineering, I knew I would have had to move to yet another city. I couldn’t afford this and didn’t want to ask my family for financial support, so I moved home to get a second degree in economics.

What are some of the skills you’ve gained from Women Techmakers?

I’ve learned more about marketing, which has been really helpful to add to my engineering and economics background. I’ve also learned what it’s like to be a part of a healthy organization, both through Women Techmakers and the Google Developer Groups I’ve joined. These communities are so inspiring, and I appreciate connecting, learning and sharing experiences with women around the world.

What would you tell someone who’s interested in Women Techmakers or Google Developer Groups?

In these groups, you feel respected. It’s important to get involved in communities where your work, thoughts and skills are validated.

One benefit of knowing people around the world through these groups is that they also think outside the box — I’ve met a lot of people who embrace more nontraditional career paths and academic choices.

Aside from planning events with Women Techmakers, what’s next for you?

I’m in the process of revising a side project, the Tech Kids Center, that I started with a team during the summer and fall of 2020. Some friends and I taught robotics, programming and business concepts online to local children. We were surprised by how brilliant kids are — they have an amazing capacity to learn technology.

“Despite the amazing talent we have in the Pakistan women, a lot of them are not comfortable being online for safety reasons,” says Hufsa Munawar. Hufsa is a community manager for Google who works with developers in Pakistan, and is extremely aware of the challenges women in her region face on the internet. Hufsa also manages Google’s Women Techmakers program, which recently brought online safety trainings for women in the area.

Together with Jigsaw, a team at Google that explores threats to open societies and builds technology to inspire scalable solutions, Women Techmakers has worked to bring online safety training to more and more women around the globe. “The workshop content really breaks down the major online security issues that exist, names them and gives suggestions for dealing with them,” Hufsa says. As a part of this program, the Women Techmaker ambassadors of Pakistan conducted eight online safety trainings and six ideathons to empower women to build solutions addressing online security concerns.

Hufsa and her team were able to train over 1,300 participants across six different cities in Pakistan — and 100% of the participants who shared their feedback said they’ve faced online safety-related issues in the past. More encouragingly, 86% said they learned something new from the online training that would make them feel safer online.

“It’s about creating awareness and education,” she says. “When you feel like it’s not just you experiencing these things, but also others in your community, you start to feel more comfortable and motivated to look for solutions.” During the training, participants shared examples of moments when they felt unsafe online, and later the group went through examples of online threat tactics — things like doxing, hacking, hate speech, violent threats, video or image-based abuse, misinformation, defamation, cyber harassment and impersonation.

After exploring these negative threats, they turned their attention to solutions during the ideathons. During the ideathons, each participant worked on proposing a solution for a problem statement given to them. These problem statements were selected from the training module and focused specifically on what women face online. “These sessions were so informative. I’ve been in tech for eight years, and I was learning new things about how these kinds of online issues can be resolved.”

One ideathon team in Karachi included a young woman who had faced online harassment for wearing a head covering. “She came up on stage and presented her idea for an app-based community where you could talk about the online hate you were facing and receive help from an AI-based system that offered ideas on what you could do, and I was really proud of her,” says Hufsa. “Her confidence, to me, was the most important thing. I loved that she understood why it’s important to form a community, felt comfortable sharing her previous experiences and proposed a unique solution to the problem.”

Hufsa sees the growing interest in these kinds of safety trainings as a sign that the power of community building is becoming better understood. “Our Women Techmaker ambassadors from Pakistan, Hira Tariq, Irum Zahra, Aiman Saeed, Ramsha Siddiqui and Annie Gul have laid down an excellent foundation for the conversation that needs to happen around women’s online safety.” she says. “This experience was so powerful because I saw that the participants trust the Women Techmakers ambassadors, and that they’re making real connections.” And the work continues: Hufsa says women who attended the workshop are requesting similar training sessions for their workplaces. “This was just the beginning. Our ambassadors and other friends in the community are working to continue training women in this space and make Digital Pakistan a safer and more inclusive space for our women.”