Not a regular tech school — ReDI Demo Day 2018
For three months, more than 300 students and 100 teachers at ReDI School have worked on their tech-related projects. At the ReDI Demo Day, the students of classes such as Java Development, Internet of Things, Blockchain, Data Science with Python and Graphic Design presented their work on two stages. The crowd voted for the two best presentations and celebrated the end of a successful semester.
I wanted to know more: Who are the students and teachers? What are their motivations and how does learning and volunteering at ReDI work? So I took the chance to talk to some of the students after they presented their work in front of the audience of fellow students, teachers and friends of ReDI.
Next to the tech courses during the week, ReDI offers courses in Coding, Cybersecurity and Digital Design for women on the weekend. Samar Kheel visited one of the “Basic Computer Skills” courses.
“When I was in Syria, I used to work on the computer. But since I came to Germany three years ago, I don’t have a computer anymore and I have forgotten a lot. Now the course helps me to refresh my skills.”
Since many of the women don’t own a computer, they can borrow one from ReDI for the course of the semester. Also, many women have young children, and so ReDI offers childcare during the four hours the women learn together.
Souhila Belakhdar learned about ReDI from a friend. “It is amazing how the teachers enabled and challenged us to learn!” Like Samar, Souhila enjoyed the atmosphere during the course. In Egypt, she didn’t work a lot on the computer, but now after the course she is interested to try her skills in graphic design. “I want to find a job in Germany. That’s why I was here.”
Marfisa D’Agostino, who is originally from Rome, teaches the course “Bring your idea online,” where women learn to build their own online shop. “I was a teacher in Italy. I have taught 15 years in Rome and I missed it. I’m glad to help. I think if you can share knowledge, it is always good.“
At the courses, the volunteer teachers are never alone. “We are a pool of four to five teachers and nobody is supposed to be present all the time, every Saturday. At the end, you teach seven, eight classes during one semester.”
What Marfisa found most challenging and surprising was the communication: “We had to find a creative way to communicate, because there were so many different languages in the room. We also had translators, in case we had to make things clear with everybody. So Arabic, English, German, in the end you just communicate and you kind of forget in which language to address a certain person. But it doesn’t matter, it worked! In the end, all of the students built these amazing websites, everybody did a great job!”
Dimitrios Georgakopoulos was also impressed by the dedication of the students in his class. In “App development with Swift” the students developed their own beatbox app. Dimitrios, hailing from Greece, arrived in Berlin five years ago. “I find it motivating to see how many people actually volunteer and donate their time. But then it makes sense, since teaching here is really rewarding. I’m so proud of my students and of what they’ve built. Their App is so cool!”
A central part of the different courses is to work on a creative project and present it at the demo day. Noelia Migueles and Vincent Tita visited the course “Data Analytics with Python” and developed their project “What drives internal displacement?”
Before they joined ReDI, both had no previous experience in data science. Vincent worked as a web developer, Noelia is a computational linguist. She arrived in Berlin a year ago and was looking to improve her coding skills. “I had tried a couple of online courses before, but I wanted to actually meet people, get feedback, and learn from others.” Vincent, who is originally from Cameroon and travelled between Spain and Berlin, was introduced to ReDI by a friend. “I saw on the website that Angela Merkel was here. I thought: ‘This place must be different from a regular coding school, I have to check it out!’”
At the course, the two were able to work with data provided by the IDMC, the Internal Displacement Monitoring Center: “It is raw data that shows when people flee due to conflict or disaster. We cleaned the data and mapped it with data from the World Bank to find indicators of future displacement.“ Noelia explained. “So, we were working on a real problem. It is motivating because you feel that you can really have an impact.” You can read more about the project here.
Elias AlSayegh, student at the course “IoT in Action”, was also working on a universal problem with his team. The “Internet of things”- prototype can tackle the waste-problem in large cities. At the demo day, he and his team-mate Ahmad WajehAlEmam described how trash is a problem in large cities in Syria as much as in Berlin. Their solution: sensors inside waste-bins help to stop the over pollution.
“I have a background in IT and I wanted to know more about IoT. I signed up for another course at ReDI to learn about the topic with the students.” Together they were invited to offices of the partners Cisco, SAP, Microsoft, Bosch, and the Fraunhofer Institute who all contributed their knowledge and insights to the project.”
IoT in action’s dedication and excitement payed off. The project won one of the two prizes at the demo day. Bahara Mazdak, the other proud winner, presented her HTML and CSS skills. Since she aims to become better at web development, she plans to learn more JavaScript and React and is already looking forward to the next semester. “I was in a mixed class of both women and men and we always had a lot of fun. It is a commitment to come to the course two times a week, but I always looked forward to go to ReDI and see my classmates. I feel even though people are so different, everyone is welcome and you can just be the way you are.“
After the food was served and the winners were announced, we danced Dakbe, the traditional Arab dance. “This pretty much looks like Greek dancing.” said Dimitrios, the developer from Greece. Anne Kjaer Riechert, the founder of ReDI School, danced in the crowd of students and teachers. “We are proud of all our students and teachers. “It is great to come together after all the hard work to celebrate. We are a tech school but social connections is vital to feel welcome in a new country and to find a job.”
Elisabeth Giesemann — volunteer teacher at the Digital Women Program
https://www.linkedin.com/in/elisabethgiesemann/
Pics by Simone Marchetti and Islam Dardeery
