Interswitch takes coding to Makoko
In line with our Switch-a-Future Initiative developed to identify, promote and ignite the right support and reward for STEM students in Africa, we went to Makoko to teach students how to code. The project kicked off on the 22nd day of October at the Slum2School STEM Innovation lab powered by Interswitch in Makoko, Yaba.
Several volunteer Software Engineers from Interswitch were present to teach the 30 secondary school students how to code. It was an exciting, humbling and intriguing moment for the Engineers as we got to introduce the kids to the tech world and all the possibilities tech offers to individuals, communities and the world at large. This article is basically to give you an insight into our experience with the students at the slum in Makoko — why we started, what we learned and why we believe everyone should join this initiative to give every child a chance.
You might be wondering, “Why is a Fintech company interested in the wellbeing of every child in Nigeria?”. Don’t worry, at the end of this article, you will understand why we are committed to nurturing and harnessing talents internally and externally for the community.
Why did we decide to start this journey?
We wanted to step up our game in the aspect of corporate social responsibility, so we came up with three core pillars that would guide us towards achieving this goal. The three core pillars we choose are Entrepreneurship (growing the Fintech community in Africa), Education and Leadership.
With regard to Entrepreneurship, growing the FinTech community and talent while creating more opportunities in Software Engineering, we launched the Interswitch Developer Academy. We chose to start the Developer Academy as we realized there was a growing passion for Software Engineering within the community, with very few onsite training to equip young talents with the required technical knowledge to build quality software. We got over 100+ applications and after the screening, 19 students were selected to join the Academy. After 6 months of training, 11 of them were given a full-time offer to join Interswitch as Software Engineers. You can read more about the Developer Academy in an article we published some months ago here.
For Education, we chose to focus on STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) and one of the ways we thought we could implement this was to come up with two interesting initiatives; InterswitchSPAK and the STEM Innovation lab (In partnership with Slum2School). InterswitchSPAK is a standalone project fully managed and organized by the CSR team at Interswitch while Slum2School is a partnership with a non-profit organization called Slum2School Africa. The Slum2School organization is focused on giving less privileged children a chance at education. We thought about how to push the story of STEM to areas that people don’t have opportunities to get such information and this drove our decision to partner with the Slum2School organization because they already have locations and a strong presence in community revitalization.
After our partnership with the Slum2School organization, we built a STEM lab in a public school at Makoko and launched it on the 17th of May, 2018 to allow the kids to not just read about computers in their textbooks but also see and use a computer in real life. We believed that a state-of-the-art lab, with computers, constant power supply and internet connection in a public school will give every child in Makoko an opportunity to understand the powerful capabilities of a computer.
The idea was to make it a walk-in for anybody in the school and give our staff at Interswitch an opportunity to mentor students and give back to the community at large and that is exactly what we did. Interesting, right?
Now that you know why we started this journey, let’s get right into the amazing details of the coding week at our STEM lab in Makoko.
The Coding Week at Makoko
Our main aim is to drive the study of STEM through students across different ages and social categories and to further re-enforce our Switch-A-Future initiative, we selected 30 teenagers from different public schools in Makoko to teach them how to code. Coding is recognized as a new form of literacy by experts at the international level and we believed this would be a great opportunity for the students to learn the best literacy skill in the 21st century. The objective of this coding week was to transfer basic coding knowledge to students from various public schools in Makoko and to create volunteer opportunities for developers at Interswitch.
According to the Daily Mail: “Makoko is a neighborhood across the 3rd Mainland Bridge located on the coast of mainland Lagos. A third of the community is built on stilts along the lagoon and the rest is on land. Sprawling out from what was originally a small village in the 18th century, it has been consumed by Lagos, Nigeria’s largest city.”
The coding week kicked off on Tuesday 22nd October and ended on the 25th of October. Follow us as we journey into the events of each day.
Day 1
Around 2 pm on Tuesday, we started the trip to the venue with a lot of excitement and zeal to meet the students. It was a fascinating ride through the vibrant, still peaceful community of Makoko within an ever busy, noisy and hectic megacity (Lagos).
We started by introducing ourselves and getting to know each student. Seun Yusuff, from our corporate marketing team at Interswitch, enlightened them about Interswitch and our vision to make Africa a place where payment becomes a part of our everyday life. After the brief explanation by Seun, one of our software engineers, Anuoluwapo Adesina from the Payment Processing team, spoke to the students on the topic “An Introduction to Computers”. We were amazed at how smart the students were as they were able to answer every question she asked. Indeed, every child deserves a chance!
The discussion on introduction to computers was amazing, the interaction was high and in the same high spirit, Edidiong Asikpo introduced the students to Programming. The highlight of her talk was when the slide carrying the sentence “Are you ready?!” was put up. The room went up in excited claps and giggles as they could not wait to dive into the real deal and start coding.
Just then, our software engineer extraordinaire Ayowole stepped in to explain what HTML is and then the fun began — they started coding.
We did not leave without a gift, however. The students taught us different types of claps: bravo clap, locomotive clap, love clap, rain clap, and atama clap. For us, it was surreal watching them clap in different ways — it was a magical experience indeed! We all went back home excited and we couldn’t wait to come back the next day.
Day 2
The next day was even more astonishing. Adaobi Ezirim welcomed the students to the STEM lab and introduced all the Engineers that volunteered to teach them how to code on that day and charged them up for the business of the day. After Adaobi’s session, Ayowole jumped right into getting all the students signed up on Free Code Camp because we believed this would be a great resource for them to keep learning how to code after the end of the week.
Kparobo Abala taught the students more about HTML immediately after Ayowole successfully signed up the students on Free Code Camp. This time, it wasn’t just about walking them through syntaxes and code structures, it was about allowing them to code by themselves and it made them so excited. If you are a developer, you know how excited you feel when your code works, yeah? That’s exactly how they felt.
Day 3
On the third day, Oluwasayo Babalola and Chukwuma Mabi volunteered to teach the students more HTML tags and adding inline CSS to an HTML file.
The happiness of the student’s faces illuminated the entire lab. The fact that they were able to change colors, add pictures, lists and so much more on the website was magical to them. They told us they enjoyed the session on Thursday because of what they were able to achieve. To them, everything they have been learning since Tuesday was adding up to become a beautiful website.
Day 4
This was a bittersweet moment for us because the Slum2School project was about to come to an end and it was time to say goodbye. However, we knew the journey had just begun since we would continue working closely with the students.
Mmekut-Mfon Edet refreshed their memory on how to insert pictures — an area a few found challenging.
Athanasius talked about the benefits of being a software developer in our evolving tech-savvy society and encouraged them to build themselves individually. To wrap up, Enyioma Anaba gave a speech about dreaming beyond their abilities.
In the end, the students showcase what they had learned, and it was amazing that a few of them went a notch higher by creating new sites and attaching appropriate pictures. We were impressed by how much time they had put into knowing more about coding, talk about enthusiasm!
This initiative meant a lot to the students. It sparked up their interest regarding programming and in no small way has set them on a path to explore the world of technology. Our overall plan is to be known for supporting STEM and this is why we intend to go to different schools to teach kids and teenagers how to code and sensitize them on the possibilities of STEM in the world. We believe in the Pan African vision and we intend to continue this movement city by city in Nigeria, then West Africa, East Africa, and the entire continent.
We are glad to be part of this good cause and we know we can give every child a chance — one child at a time.
