Lagos State Open Andela Training 2016

Open Andela program is an initiative of the Lagos State Government in conjunction with Andela to help build up folks who are willing to undergo the 11 weeks grooming in Computer Programming. This project is carried out under the Ministry of Wealth Creation and Employment of Lagos State. In this 11 weeks program, participants will learn how to build software, change their lives, and change the world around them. This program also aims at empowering youths with entrepreneurial skills and build them up for greater job opportunities, which is to say, bringing unemployment to the barest minimum.

The opening ceremony

At the opening ceremony today, there came around the commissioner for Wealth Creation, lagos State in person of Mr. Durosinmi-Etti and also representatives from Sterling Bank, Etisalat, Andela, and Microsoft.

The learning environment is a very encouraging one that supports creative thinking and innovation of new and mind blowing ideas. The venue is at the first ever Nigeria Code School, Audax Solutions Centre in Lekki.

The program is fully and proudly sponsored by Etisalat, Sterling Bank, Google, as well as Microsoft. There are really so many opportunities that lie ahead for the participants by the end of this program.

According to the commissioner, 2000 application forms were received, but only 500 lucky applicants were accepted and this is not on the bases of whether they know someone or they paid some amount of money to get in as he said.
"Oh, how lucky they are to have gotten in!"
For the five hundred applicants, the first batch is currently in session, which will run for the next 11 weeks and this consists of about a hundred participants.
God bless everyone who has put in efforts in making this program a reality.

Audax Summer Code School, 2016

It all started on Monday, the 8th of August, 2016 and it ended on Friday, the 2nd of September, 2016.

Students working

Summer Code School 2016 @ the first ever Nigerian Code School, Audax Solutions Centre,   was indeed incredible for the awesome kids who came in for this year's session. Most of them were at first, amateurs by the time they began, but surprisingly and as time went on for them, they got to understand and speak the language of the programmers.

They are just so lucky to start this early. Learning all the rudiments and basics of programming at their own age and with the kind of brain they have at their respective ages would help them tackle easily the challenges they might face in learning higher programming languages.

As their Scratch class instructor, they were made to write and read out reports of the previous class each day they attend Audax Summer Code School. They wrote a lot of things about me, which I am not going to share now.
They were really awesome in class each day and I miss them a lot now that the 2016 session has ended.

I wish them all the best in their programming journey and hope to see them do cool stuff with all that they have learnt and make the world a better place to live in.

View more pictures from the 2016 session.