The Visiola Foundation held its annual 5-week Coding Boot Camp for Girls on July 17 – August 19, 2017 in partnership with Google Corporation. This year, the Foundation’s annual intensive 5-week coding boot camp brought together 50 young women with little or no experience in computer programming and were taught how to code in various computer programming languages. 50 young women were introduced to Full Stack Web Development, Mobile App Development, Python, MySQL, PHP, Graphic Design, and interviewing for success. Participants were further given the opportunity to build dynamic and responsive websites using HTML, CSS, JavaScript and Angular JS, and learned to set up content management websites. Furthermore, they were introduced to database management and server-side scripting and learned to link their websites with a backend database. Students were taught to build mobile applications and design amazing projects to solve challenges they identified in their respective communities.
In line with the Visiola Foundation’s 360-Degree Developmental Learning Model, the participants received direct mentorship from seasoned IT professionals, including Nkem Begho (CEO, FutureSoft Nigeria Ltd.); Dr. Fidelis Ndeh-Che (MD, Quanteq Technology Solutions); Mudi Kenney (Software Engineer, Pratt & Whitley); Yetunde Sanni (Software Developer, Andela Nigeria); Tosin Olayinka (CEO, Cinoteck), and Cellulant Nigeria.
At the end of the camp, the participants were grouped and tasked to develop solutions to basic challenges, including education and learning, data analysis, and so on. The projects also required the teams to design brochures for their respective projects. The participants were thereby exposed to logical and systematic reasoning to solve problems.
The Visiola Foundation’s high-quality Coding Boot Camp are important programs designed to increase Nigeria’s technical capacity, while directly crowding-in female talent. Beneficiaries of the program are equipped with a strong foundation on which to pursue careers in computer science or become tech entrepreneurs.
