On December 7th, 2019, CodeGirls celebrated its 4th graduation ceremony at 10Pearls University, Karachi. The graduation ceremony was attended by the boot camp participants, trainers, mentors, sponsors, organizers, community leaders and friends of the program.
CodeGirls has so far trained over 550 girls and has placed over 40 of them in the industry since July 2018. In this graduation ceremony, 92 girls from Phase 1 (Cohort 5) and 66 girls from Phase 2 (Cohort 2) completed their training and are ready to find work opportunities.
The ceremony started with a welcome note by Faiza Yousuf (Founder – WomenInTechPK, Co-founder – CodeGirls). She welcomed and thanked everyone for actively supporting the cause and their presence at this celebration. Faiza gave an overview of the program, talked about its progress and its mission towards the inclusion of women in the technology industry as well as in the country’s economy.
Her talk was followed by a video note from Dr. Hasnain Walji (Executive Director – United Global Initiative), in which he talked about the importance of inclusion and the business case for it. He thanked all the organizations that provide internship and employment opportunities to CodeGirls and all the generous sponsors who invested in the program. Dr. Walji also congratulated the entire team, program graduates and especially Urooj Fatima who was recently interviewed by W4.ORG for her transformative journey.
Two of CodeGirls alumni members, Alia Zaidi and Mehak Nayani shared their experiences of overcoming obstacles to motivate and inspire the participants. They spoke about their experiences of learning how to code and then finding their footing in the technology industry.
At the end of each cohort, participants have to work together to make group projects and they are graded based on their performance in the team project as well as on class participation and individual vivas. This time, the top 2 project teams from Phase 1 (Cohort 5) and the top 3 project teams from Phase 2 (Cohort 2) presented their work to the audience. The projects were related to website development, developed using web technologies, including HTML, CSS, JQuery, JS, WordPress, and PHP.
Sana Hussain (Senior Manager Human Resource – 10Pearls) was next up, she spoke to the audience about her experience of hiring CodeGirls graduates and why it is important that employers extend support and opportunities to diversity and inclusion based initiatives.
Neelam Raheel invited all the trainers and successful participants to receive their certificates and announced the top 10 students from Phase 1 (Cohort 5) and the top 4 students from Phase 2 (Cohort 2) of the program. Laptops and tablets were awarded to the successful participants from Phase 1 (Cohort 5) and Phase 2 (Cohort 2), respectively.
Shamim Rajani concluded the ceremony with an ending note talking about her vision for the program, the tremendous support they have received from organizations worldwide and a message of “Grit and Determination” for the graduating cohorts.
CodeGirls has recently published its program assessment report where you can see its progress so far. If you want to become a patron of the program, please see the sponsorship proposal here.
Few Highlights from the Graduation Ceremony:
More Pictures from the Graduation Ceremony: https://www.facebook.com/pg/CodeGirlsbyConsulNetCorp/photos/?tab=album&album_id=2368753906567921
About CodeGirls:
CodeGirls is a community-funded Coding and Business Skills boot camp, designed for girls/women to learn how to code and start and run their businesses. The program is in multiple phases and is changing 220 lives every four months. CodeGirls is run by ConsulNet Corporation, in partnership with United Global Initiative and WomenInTechPK along with their various local and international sponsors.
The CodeGirls is accepting applications for Phase 1 and 2 of their program, please call +92 213 455 7174 for details!
Website: https://codegirls.consulnet.net/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/CodeGirlsbyConsulNetCorp/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/CodeGirlsKhi
