the visiola foundation e-newsletter
Issue Q1 – Q2, 2023
Ladé Araba
Founder and President of the Visiola Foundation
Founders' Corner
Welcome to the latest edition of our quarterly newsletter. We’re excited to share exciting updates and news from the Visiola Foundation. It’s already been an eventful year for us. We taught 660 junior and senior secondary school students at 17 Government Secondary Schools (GSS) in Abuja during the January to April term of our After-School STEM Clubs for Girls (ASCG). The program seeks to educate, train, mentor, and inspire otherwise marginalized students to view challenges in their communities as opportunities for them to leverage science, technology, engineering, and math to create value for themselves and others. We were also pleased to receive applications from across Africa for our Coding Boot Camp for Women. We received 75 applications from Ghana, Kenya and Nigeria for our first cohort, and awarded completion certificates to 30 young women from Ghana, Kenya, and Nigeria. We are currently running the second term of the ASCG Program (May to July) at 20 GSS, with a group of 527 girls learning advanced scratch programming (visual programming). We hope you enjoy reading about our students’ activities in the first half of this year. Do remember to connect with us on social media via Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn.
Warm Regards,
Ladé
Students working on their create a story’ project
AFTRER-SCHOOL STEM CLUBS FOR GIRLS
We held our After-School STEM Clubs for Girls 17 Government Secondary Schools (GSS) in Abuja from January 16 – March 8 2023. The clubs ran between 9:00am and 4:00 pm daily, depending on our pre-agreed schedule with each school and the respective STEM Coordinators. Students learnt visual programming using Scratch during this first term. They were able to program a clicker game, animated letters, conversations between characters, and much more. They were also given tasks and assignments that challenged their thinking and sparked their creativity. We are pleased that 660 students completed the first phase of the program.
Mariam (14) and Peculiar (14) with their prizes for winning the intra-school competition
INTERNATIONAL WOMEN’S DAY2023
This year’s International Women’s Day theme was DigitALL: Innovation and technology for gender equality. Also, the day marked a call to action for celebrating women’s equality, achieving a world free of bias, stereotypes, and discrimination. To build a world that’s diverse, equitable, and inclusive. A world where difference is valued and celebrated. Together we can forge women’s equality. This year, we celebrated the IWD in schools with students from the ASCG Program. We held intra-school competitions with students divided into themes and timed to work on projects using scratch programming. The winning team from each school was celebrated and given prizes.
In-person CBC students learning how to create a landing page using HTML & CSS
In-person students during a mentoring session with MLA
2023 HYBRID CODING BOOT CAMP-COHORT ONE GRADUATE 30 WOMEN
The Visiola Foundation’s Hybrid Coding Bootcamp was an intensive eight-week training program that provided participants with a strong foundation upon which to build their careers as computer programmers and tech entrepreneurs. The boot camp was held on March 27 – May 19, 2023. It ran from 9:00 a.m. – 12:00 p.m. (WAT) daily, Monday to Friday, and classes were held in-person and via Zoom. Participants were taught Full Stack Web Development, including HTML, CSS, Javascript, Python, and Django. They worked on individual assignments and group challenges that enhanced their learning, critical thinking, analysis, and problem-solving abilities. The aim of the bootcamp was to encourage more women to pursue technical careers by empowering them with vital knowledge to facilitate their success. The camp ended with a hybrid closing competition where participants presented their final groupprojects
The Group Projects are summarized below.
GROUP A – BUDGET TRACKER APP: To help the public take care of their personal finances, budgeting, and tracking, savings thus reaching their financial
purposes.
GROUP B – BLOG: To encourage women to build careers in web development (frontend, backend, and full-stack development) by providing clarity on myths surrounding building a career in tech and providing resources to encourage them.
GROUP C – E-COMMERCE WEBSITE: To provide fashionable clothing that empowers confidence while taking into consideration the various styles and preferences of every woman.
GROUP D – My African Recipe Book APP: Our app aims to incorporate African dish recipes that help to make cooking easier and provide solutions for discovering, organizing, and planning different African meals.
GROUP E – BOOKSTORE E-COMMERCE APP: To elevate the joy of reading through an immersive and captivating e-commerce app.
GROUP F – VF Event APP: To arrange events, let the world see the new way of arranging events. To make memories over again.
GROUP G – Online directory for Artisans (Plumbers, Mechanics, Carpenters)
GROUP H – Hospital management system: An app that automates the management of various day-to-day operations of a hospital. At the end of the presentation, Group C, who built an e-commerce website swiftly won the CBC Cohort 1, 2023 competition.
In addition, we were pleased to have Ms. Olubunmi Odumade (Sr Engineering Manager of DevSecOps at Omada Health) and Mr. Nkeze Slyvester – (Software Engineer at Sterling Bank) serve as judges during the closing competition. The students have now joined the Foundation’s alumni network and will be connected with leading employers and opportunities
Students learning Scratch Programming
AFTER-SCHOOL STEM CLUBS FOR GIRLS (ASCG)
We are currently teaching Advanced Scratch Programming to 527 girls at 20 Government Secondary Schools (GSS) in Abuja. The After-School STEM Clubs sessions started on May 8, 2023 and will run for a period of 10 weeks. The Instructors teach and train the students ideation, coding, and entrepreneurship.
ASCG STUDENTS COMPLETE AT THE FIRST LEGO LEAGUE OPEN COMPETITION IN MOROCCO
Students from the Visiola Foundation’s After-School STEM Clubs for Girls (ASCG) Program made their mark at this year’s First LEGO League Open Competition in Morocco on May 18 – 21, 2023. They built an innovation project, using sound energy to generate electricity. Accompanied by their STEM Coordinator (Mrs. Aisha) they emerged with an impressive 6th position out of 55 teams from 40 countries.
Students learning Scratch Programming
WORLD TECHNOVATION GIRLS CHALLENGE
SomeASCG students made us proud at the World Technovation Girls Challenge 2023, clinching the 3rd position among schools in Abuja. The students built an application for waste management called Procured. Our STEM Coordinator, Mr. Obiora, supported them throughout this incredible journey.
