Cisco Live! Cancun, October 5, 2015.- Fifty girls from the city of Cancun have been selected to receive scholarships from Cisco Networking Academy® as parts of Cisco’s efforts to encourage engagement with Information and Communication Technology (ICT) by young women and to promote opportunities for women in this important and rapidly developing field. These scholarships are being awarded as part of the Girls Power Tech Acceleration Program, a global mentoring initiative by Cisco intended to support the United Nations’ Girls in ICT Day, which is taking place for the first time in Mexico this year.

“We feel honored that the Office of the Presidency of Mexico will act as a strategic partner for this initiative, and that Alejandra Lagunes, the Head of the National Digital Strategy Coordination for the Presidency, will attend the scholarship award ceremony”, said Rogelio Velasco, Vice President of Cisco México.

The Girls Power Tech Acceleration Program features a networking event for the girls during the Connected Women Forum of Cisco Live!™ Cancun. At this event, the scholarship recipient will have the opportunity to meet and talk to female Latin American professionals from Cisco and other technology related organizations, giving the girls insight and information about successful women in the ICT field. 

The scholarship will allow the recipients, who are public school students between 15 and 18 years old, to learn about a variety of ITC topics, including tech entrepreneurship, cybersecurity, Linux, and the Internet itself. The girls also will attend lectures at the Universidad Tecnologica de Cancun that offers them the basics of ICT. The scholarship recipients will also have access to a series of webinars that will allow them to communicate with women working in different areas and organizations in the ITC industry to learn from them their experiences and the challenges that they have faced.

Girls Power Tech Acceleration Program belongs to the Cisco® Girls Power Tech, which is focused on encouraging girls and young women in more than 50 countries, and 80 Cisco offices, to discover opportunities opened by careers in information and communication technology (ICT).

About Cisco Networking Academy

Cisco Networking Academy is an IT skills and career building program for learning institutions and individuals worldwide. More than 5 million people have joined the Networking Academy and become a force for change in the global economy since 1997.  For further information go to https://www.netacad.com.

About Cisco

Cisco (NASDAQ: CSCO) is the worldwide leader in IT that helps companies seize the opportunities of tomorrow by proving that amazing things can happen when you connect the previously unconnected. For ongoing news, please go to http://thenetwork.cisco.com.

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