Knowing that the economic fallout from the pandemic is disproportionately affecting working women , we strengthened the Women Rock-IT program in fiscal 2021. With a goal to inspire 20,000 girls, women engineers across Cisco supported over 250 volunteers worldwide to host Girls in ICT Day. They participated in our virtual Anyone Can Code live social media event, a global campaign to encourage students to learn the basics of computer science. The event, made possible through a partnership with nonprofit Code.org , had over 16,000 views and 1000 live interactions across the globe. During the economic downturn at the onset of the pandemic, Networking Academy partnered with the U.K. government's Skills Toolkit Initiative to offer the public free IT skills. Through this initiative, Networking Academy engaged 8800 learners in courses, including Programming Essentials in Python, Programming Essentials in C, and Programming Essentials in C++. Cisco supports literacy learning at scale Beyond connecting students with education on IT skills, Cisco funds nonprofits with solutions that help K-12 educators and students use technology to learn more effectively. One of our grantees is CommonLit , an education technology nonprofit that operates a free online reading program used in 195 countries and territories and over 60,000 low-income schools in the United States alone. Cisco supported the development of CommonLit’s Annotation Tool, which students can use to take digital notes and highlight text. Teachers can respond to students’ notes in real time, while they read, an indispensable feature for students learning in hybrid environments. Since the tool launched, over 600,000 students have created 69 million annotations and highlights. In fiscal 2021, with Cisco’s support, CommonLit expanded its services to reach underserved students in Latin America with localized materials in Spanish, and made its platform accessible to users with disabilities. Cisco is also providing nonmonetary support, including lending the expertise of data scientists to identify trends in annotation data. Cisco is helping us find new opportunities to make the tool even more effective. It’s a level of engagement and interest in our day -to-day work that we don’t typically see with funders. ” — Michelle Brown, CommonLit founder and CEO FUTURE INTRO POWER INCLUSIVE