8TH SEPTEMBER, 2022
Following the completion of an intense 14-week course, in which the students learnt the basics of C#, advanced topics such as databases (Entity framework & SQL) and webservers (.net web api) the students finally graduated in a ceremony held on 8th September 2022. The students were able to complete the course thanks to the outstanding teaching provided by Daniel, a teacher employed through our Nigerian entity (The Otukpo Tech Academy). They also received free lunches every day of the course.
The ceremony was graced with the presence of a local dignitary who has been our community stakeholder and had the honour of handing out the awards. Also joining virtually was a trustee and a volunteer who had run daily standups for the students, and supported them during their week-long final hackathon.
The students gave positive feedback on the success of the course and the impact it made in their lives. Captured below are some of their comments:
Patrick - “This course has indeed so beneficial to me, I was privileged to be on the 2021 course and also this year’s course. The knowledge I’ve gotten so far from the courses have created opportunities for me including a job I got to build a landing page, prospective developer work for a growing company, and a portfolio website I built for myself. I also signed up on Upwork a website for freelancers”
Isaac - “I have learnt a lot from this course and I appreciate the organisers. Currently I’m working towards building a website called File that connects musicians together where they get to display their art. I’m also working with a colleague of mine where we plan on building an app to solve transportation issues here in our locality”
Abigail - “With the knowledge I’ve gotten so far from Otukpo Tech Academy [Our Nigerian Entity], I am building a game”
Like all great events, it ended with a celebratory lunch (and emotional goodbyes from the students).
We’re planning to start using renewable energy to power our computers. We’ll be taking advantage of the high levels of sunlight in Nigeria (Average mean temperature of 27.4°C in Otukpo where the school is based) and deploying solar powered computers that our students can code on.
We’ve recently completed another set of weeklong courses. We ran 3 free week long courses on how to program in html, css and javascript over April and May 2022. Unfortunately, we didn’t have as much uptake on these courses as we were hoping due to them being held during term time but we still had a good turnout with 20 students participating across the 3 courses.
We also had a few issues with electricity during the course and we innovated: teaching our students how to code on their phones, which has the added benefit of enabling them to code at home too!
The 10 week bootcamp ended with a bang. Or more precisely an intense 3 day hackathon.
It began on Wednesday morning with pitches of some problems in their local community. The students then self formed into 2 teams of roughly 8 students, picked a challenge each and got coding. The task was to come up with an idea to solve the problem, create a prototype then present and demo their prototype in front of a panel of judges.
It was an intense race against time to get the presentations and code ready for the cut off at 12pm on Friday. Both teams even requested to work through the night (and pulled an all-nighter session)!
There was a palatable air of nerves and excitement as the students took to the stage to present their work. Each student took part in the presentation giving them an opportunity to practise an important skillset. The work produced was of a very high quality and a testament to all the hard work the students have put in over the 10 week course.
The day ended with an award ceremony, with a prize for the winning team and certificates for all the students. One student was so overjoyed at his team winning he showed off his nigerian dance skills as he danced for joy.
The Back Home Project was a proud supporter of the hackathon and a big shout out goes to our UK based volunteers who helped out with coding and presentation skills workshops.
Team 2 doing a cover shoot for their album!
Students presenting
The audience included our UK volunteers who joined remotely to judge the presentations
Q&A Session
Underpressure in the Q&A Session
Rejoicing
Students awarded certificates by Daniel, the teacher from the Otukpo Tech Academy
Students awarded certificates by Daniel, the teacher from the Otukpo Tech Academy
Coding on the Raspberry Pi 4B
Students learning how to code on their phones
Q&A Session
