The Visiola Foundation’s 2016 Coding Boot Camp for Girls was a huge success. Young women between 17 and 25 years of age from disadvantaged backgrounds who had no prior programming experience learned to code in this intensive five-week program; which took place on July 18 – August 20, 2016 at Global International College, Abuja. They acquired strong foundational knowledge in logic, reasoning, Data Structures, and Algorithms and learned to code in JavaScript. They also learned to build interactive websites using HTML, CSS, and PHP.
In addition, the Coding Boot Camp taught the young women to believe in themselves, to maintain their personal integrity, ethics, and values, and to work hard to become successful. They learned how to work in teams, identify problems and create simple solutions, while becoming better public speakers.
The participants further benefitted from targeted mentoring sessions by leading IT professionals. Dr. Fidelis Ndeh-Che (MD, Quanteq Technology Solutions Ltd), Mr. Gbenga Sesan (Founder, Paradigm Initiative for Nigeria), Ms. Mudi Apoe (VP, Goldman Sachs), Mr. Olu Aguda (Software Developer, Goldman Sachs), and Andela Corporation Software Developers Yetunde Sanni and Olaide Agboola visited the boot camp to inspire the students and share their personal secrets to success.
The students concluded the boot camp by presenting practical projects, including web applications for online medical diagnosis, a coding tutorial, educational study aids etc. The best eight participants were rewarded with new laptops; which were generously donated by Mrs. Bunmi Lawson (MD/CEO, ACCION Microfinance Bank Nigeria) and her friends.
