Dear friends,
Computer Science education is incredibly important for all students in the modern world, but it can be particularly beneficial for hispanic communities. For many minority students, pursuing a career in Computer Science can provide access to well-paying and fulfilling job opportunities that may not been available to them otherwise. It provides individuals with the technical skills and knowledge they need to be successful in today's increasingly digital economy.
The growth of the technology industry has led to a high demand for skilled computer science professionals in almost every economy sector, making it a promising field for individuals looking to enter the job market.
It is the mission of omegaUp to build the talent pipeline of Software Engineering from Spanish-speaking communities by providing an accessible learning platform together with social programs.
The work omegaUp does is focused in 3 major areas:
- omegaUp democratizes access to high quality Computer Science educational content in Spanish for hundreds of diverse communities in Latin America.
- omegaUp provides tools and training to educators to improve the Computer Science learning cycle.
- omegaUp connects top talent working in the tech industry with students in Latin America through social programs.
Below are the highlights of the work we have done in omegaUp in 2022.
Democratizing access to high-quality Computer Science educational materials
Our easily accessible educational platform omegaUp.com provides free high quality Computer Science educational content in Spanish to underserved communities. omegaUp.com contains thousands of coding challenges ready to be used by students to improve their programming and problem solving skills.
In 2022 we provided our free educational platform to 54,499 students in Latin America and Spanish-speaking communities in the USA. Together, all students solved a total of 595,365 coding solutions in omegaUp — more than 1 challenge every minute of the year!
Furthermore, thanks to the focus of our engineering team in improving omegaUp.com usability and content organization, the student engagement in our educational platform has increased 13% with respect to last year. Sessions per user has increased to 41%. Not only more students are using omegaUp.com every year, but also those students are staying more and more in the platform to learn more.
omegaUp.com is the Software Engineering educational platform of choice leveraged by many schools & universities across Latin America. In 2022 more than 407 schools used omegaUp for their Computer Science course, with a special focus on public education institutions. Teachers from these schools hosted a total of 1403 courses on our platform — an YoY increase of 132%!
omegaUp has been adopted as the official platform for many diverse and strong communities of students passionate about Computer Science and Technology, hosting many important coding competitions like:
- Mexican Girls Olympiad in Informatics (Olimpiada Femenil Mexicana de Informática)
- Iberoamerican Olympiad in Informatics
- Mexico ICPC Programming Contest official contest mirror
- Mexican Olympiad in Informatics
- Peruvian Olympiad in Informatics
- Tecnológico Nacional de México Coding Cup
In 2022 omegaUp hosted the largest Programming Contest in Mexico to date, the Coding Cup organized by the Instituto Tecnológico de Estudios Superiores del Sur de Guanajuato (ITSUR). The contest was held last October with more than 2000 students participating in 684 teams from 103 universities around the country.
Olimpiada Femenil Mexicana de Informática (OFMI)
Increasing the representation of women in tech can help to address the gender imbalance in the industry and create a more equitable and inclusive workplace. The tech industry has a significant impact on the economy and society, and it is important for all members of society to be represented in the development of technology.
2022 marked the start of one of the most ambitious projects in omegaUp: the Mexican Girls Olympiad in Informatics (Olimpiada Femenil Mexicana de Informática, OFMI). By providing girls with a platform to compete and show their skills in informatics, they have the opportunity to demonstrate their potential and contribute to the improvement of the tech sector.
The OFMI programming contest also serves as a platform to motivate more girls to join STEM careers, foster their interest in the industry and generate role models to be inspired from.
The very first OFMI was held in January 2022 with 100 participants from Mexico. The best participants were selected to training camps with the goal of participating in the European Girls Olympiad in Informatics, held in Turkey last September.
The 4 girls proudly representing Mexico in the EGOI were by Abigail Zamarripa, Fernanda Mancilla, Cynthia López and Romina Nájera. The delegation had an outstanding performance: Fernanda, Cynthia and Romina won Silver medals and Mexico achieved 7th place overall by average scored points.
We want to congratulate Abigail, Fernanda, Cynthia and Romina, as well as Andrea Santillana — Director of the OFMI and Juan Carlos Sigler — Deputy Leader for their fantastic results!
To learn more about the Girls Olympiad in Informatics, visit the OFMI web page: https://ofmi.omegaup.com/
Mujeres en Programación
omegaUp is very proud of partnering with Mujeres en Programación (Women in Programming), led by Dr. Nancy Pacheco. Mujeres en Programación is a community with the goal of empower Latin American women to learn and work as programmers. Mujeres en Programación enriches women's knowledge through technical education, programming contests and soft skills that prepare and connect them with companies in the tech sector.
The project was launched in March 2022. Since then, Mujeres en Programación has hosted 9 programming contests for Latin American women. More than 1200 women have registered for these events from 22 countries around the world.
This year, over 400 women participated in 14 coding courses and more than 100 in our first GitHub course. These recorded sessions have reached over 1,000 views.
Mujeres en Programación is a project with enourmous potential to be an agent of change. The results achieved in just a few months since the start is a testament of the hard work and dedication of Dr. Nancy Pacheco and her fantastic team. We are very proud to be their technological partners and fiscal sponsors. To learn more about Mujeres en Programación check out their annual report.
Educational programs
Resolviendo Problemas con omegaUp (Solving coding challenges with omegaUp) is a series of YouTube educational videos explaining solutions to some of the coding challenges in the platform. Every Monday we challenge students to solve an omegaUp coding problem, and every Friday we publish a video with the solution.
We created 35 explanatory videos during 2022. Our YouTube channel had more than 38K views over this year, and we doubled the number of subscribers.
Connecting top talent working in the tech industry with students in Latin America
Our vision is to cultivate a more diverse & inclusive Software Engineering community by providing a free and accessible platform that empowers all Latin American students. As a part of our mission, we work to inspire potential talent beyond a coding platform through social and mentoring programs that transfer experience from the industry to students in Latin American communities.
Mi historia programando is a series of live interviews and conferences designed to allow our current and former users to share their journey in CS Education and in the Tech Industry, including tips on how to further strengthen their engineering and problem solving skills and how to land a job in the tech industry.
During 2022, we hosted 24 interviews with hispanic engineers working in the tech industry who shared their experiences and life journeys with our audience.
Finances
All these results were achieved with an operating budget of only $108,810 USD. Out of this total, $88,077 (80.95%) went to support our social programs: omegaUp.com $51,779.19 (56.7% of total), Educational content $17,632 (16.2% of total), Girls Olympiad in Informatics $13,967 (12.8% of total) and Women In Programming $4,698 (4.3% of total). The following chart summarizes the breakdown of expenses for the Fiscal Year 2021:
To all of omegaUp volunteers and staff — THANK YOU! Everyday you make the impossible possible and tackle every challenge to contribute with the best of your capabilities to help the next generation of talent. Your resiliency and commitment are truly inspirational.
We need your support
Our vision is to cultivate a more diverse & inclusive Software Engineering community by providing a free and accessible platform which empowers all Latin American students.
We need your support to keep omegaUp operating. With your support, we can bring Computer Science education to hundreds of thousands of students enrolled in engineering courses across Central and South America, with a focus on public education, and institutions serving rural, indigenous and underserved communities.
If you want to help us to keep working towards a more diverse Software Engineering industry by empowering the Latin American community, please make a generous donation today at https://omegaup.org/#donate.
To all our supporters, especially to our teachers: your dedication is what keeps us motivated and inspires us to work every day on accomplishing the omegaUp mission of building the talent pipeline of Software Engineering from Latin America and other Spanish-speaking communities.
Thank you for all your support,
Joe Ponce-Galindo
Co-founder and Executive Director.
omegaUp
