She Code Africa Mentoring Program — Cohort 4 Recap
The She Code Africa Mentoring Program (SCAMP) is a 3-month intensive program targeted at ladies across Africa to educate and train them on beginner and intermediate tracks.
2021 has been an exciting year so far, for us at She Code Africa. We’ve had numerous initiatives that culminated in new program launches, long-term partnerships and continued growth in achieving our mission.
When the mentoring programs launched in 2019, we had a bold vision of empowering ladies across Africa with tech skills and career advancement opportunities. Thanks to the collective grit and determination among the SCA team, we have so far impacted 500+ women across Africa through our mentoring program. In addition to team work, we work with guiding principles that ensure the program runs efficiently, on-time and as per schedules set. These standards include:
- A learning path template where the mentor curates learning content according to set guidelines. This allows a degree of customisation for each track while still maintaining the learning path’s basic structure.
- A team of Persons Of Contact(POCs) who act as the program coordinators. They act as the go-between for mentors, mentees and SCA. They handle roles such as interviews, screening, managing group channels and conveying issues that come up during program activities to the program manager
- Engineering coordinators who develop the technical solutions for the application phase.
Cohort 4 was concluded by a lively virtual graduation ceremony held on 31st May 2021.
To kick off the program, we ran month-long social media initiatives to create awareness and drive up applications for mentors and mentees. At first, we had challenges enrolling mentees for intermediate tracks so we decided to change our communication strategy and focus on creating awareness for individual tracks. This led to a spike in applications and by the time we closed the application forms, we had received over 160 applications.
The 4th cohort was well received by the mentees and mentors as witnessed by the positive reviews below:
“Thank you for the opportunity to improve my analytical skills. Through this journey I have gained confidence and industry experience in my switch to data science career, and I have learned how to mentor other women and girls in the big data field.”
“This program gave me a leap in my JavaScript learning process. I now know what to improve on and where to go from here. I want to thank the SCA mentorship team for your selfless service even with your busy schedules. I am grateful. You may find my project not complete yet, I am working to improve it. Thanks once again for this opportunity.”
What Did We Do Differently In Cohort 4?
The feedback from cohort 3 is that we needed to introduce product management, DevOps, software testing and quality assurance.
Cohort 4 Highlights
The mentees and mentors worked diligently to develop responsive websites, engaging articles and relevant projects to their tracks. To qualify for graduation, mentees had to meet the following criteria:
- Develop a project that’s relevant to your learning path
- Write a technical article on key concepts learnt during the three month program or;
- Record a technical talk in a relevant technical subject
- Attend all weekly check-ins and monthly meetings
The criteria above ensure mentees leave the program with a working portfolio to showcase their new skills and secure career growth opportunities.
These are the top projects developed by cohort 4 mentees;
- Basic Exploratory Data Analysis for used cars by Masturah Moshood [Mentor — Olufunmilayo Aforijiku]
- A bitcoin trading platform by Etulan Opoto [Mentor — Iyanu Akinleye]
- A health App UX proposal by Oluwafunmilayo Obasa & Bridget Fayomi [Mentor — Ademorin Ajepe]
- A Plant App Proposal for product management by Pamela Uzodimma [Mentor — Yemisi Obielodan]
- A profanity detector created with Python by Umutoni Marie Ritha [ Mentor — Akintola stephen Iyanu]
Technical writing is an important skill that tech professionals must learn in order to stay competitive. Writing a technical article or recording a talk is part of the graduation criteria from SCA. We believe in not just offering technical skills, but also career advancement skills to help mentees position themselves for fulfilling opportunities.
Some of the top technical articles from cohort 4 mentees are:
- https://sarahadebesin.hashnode.dev/my-sca-mentorship-journey-learning-javascript by Sarah Adebesin [Mentor — Edgar John]
- https://hashnode.com/post/javascript-and-the-dom-ckoxpv99n0308eks10ds1e9gj by Glory Tefe [Mentor — Amaefule Gabriella]
- https://owosenikehinde01.medium.com/list-methods-5dc8fdd5b482 by Owoseni Kehinde [Mentor — Rufai Ahmed]
- https://endeleylaide.medium.com/my-mentee-journey-at-she-code-africa-b44bf6c73e87 by Laide Endeley [Mentor — chiamaka Okenwa]
- https://docs.google.com/document/d/1A3lMaeLAbIEIjx6hLPkw0Ku7x625Bf_tT6yQll5tBkk/edit by Chiagozie Eziagor [Mentor — Mayowa Ajala]
Cohort 5 ?
Applications for the next cohort fully kick off in September 2021, so be on the lookout for announcements on our website and our social platforms.
The She Code Africa Mentoring program is also open to hiring partnerships with companies looking to fill in technical roles within their teams, do send an email to partnerships@shecodeafrica.org
Love to support our work through a donation? kindly visit shecodeafrica.org/donate to make one.
See you in the next cohort!
