Software engineer Tengku Hafidz remembers the first time he fell in love with coding – during a class in polytechnic.
Mr Tengku, who went on to study information systems at university, now imparts tech skills to young people, particularly those from the Malay and Muslim communities. He started DevLabs Academy with his friends in 2015, which last year rolled out CodeHero, a free year-long programme of fortnightly Web development classes for secondary school students at madrasahs.
“We hope they can build something useful before they even graduate… or if they are exposed to (these skills), they might consider further education in that direction.”
He is also one of the creators of Makan Rescue, an app that alerts people to surplus food nearby; as well as Terawhere, a carpooling platform to help people get to mosques during the Ramadan period.
As digital skills grow increasingly important in today’s workforce, people like Mr Tengku who know about coding or data analytics are using their skills to give others a leg up.
While some create websites for non-profit organisations, others run courses for groups such as children from disadvantaged families, and women, who are under-represented in the tech industry.
There are at least 10 such groups which are doing this in Singapore.
Ms Rachel Chin, who picked up coding because she wanted her children to be more interested in it, volunteers with Code in the Community, an initiative by coding school Saturday Kids, where children from disadvantaged families attend lessons for free. She teaches the programming languages Scratch and Python.
At social enterprise She Loves Data, volunteer instructor Suteja Kanuri helps women get into technology by teaching them skills and dispensing industry-related advice. She teaches the R programming language.
The group also helps create websites for non-profit organisations.
TechLadies will, for example, often create an internal website to help the NGO collate, sort and find its data more efficiently – as opposed to typing into Excel spreadsheets.
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Source: The Straits Times, 29 December 2019