CodeON Relaunches in 2022!
With BoomTown’s help, this free after school computer science lab reopens in an Charleston East Side neighborhood community center.
Valerie Sessions, PhD Chair of the computer science department at Charleston Southern University and co-founder of Charleston Women in Tech had an idea - she wanted to hold an Hour of Code in a laundromat - a place that already served as a makeshift community center where kids, seniors & other residents of an under resourced neighborhood normally gathered in the afternoons. She wanted to bring access to computers & exposure to the growing digital economy to a place she knew sat squarely in the digital divide. Parents in this area had no time or ability to travel to the other side of town to bring their kids to code schools or clubs let alone the pay an exorbitant tuition for these specialized classes outside of school. These homes don’t have laptops or wifi for learning or for connecting to the online universe of culture & communication (for research, school work, applying for jobs, playing video games or even learning to code). So, along with other Charleston Women in Tech members, Valerie came to the laundromat with laptops, Code.org and Google CSFirst.org free curriculum, headphones, mousepads and some snacks. The Hour of Code event was a smash hit & subsequently resulted in a weekly free after school program lead by volunteers from tech companies all over the Charleston region. News of the effort spread & was covered by CNN Business, Upworthy & even garnered a couple of tweets from Eric Schmidt & Mike Seivert:
That was in 2016, since then Charleston Women in Tech has held CodeON free code learning sessions in churches, park and recreation buildings, foster homes, libraries & other public spaces in Charleston. Volunteers have come from the full spectrum of regional tech companies (from software and ecommerce to fintech and aerospace) & every role has been represented from senior level software engineers, data scientists, UX/UI designers to HR professionals, customer success consultants, and sales team members. They came to simply spend time, talk about their own career journeys in technology, and help anyone of any age to work on their code.org projects. (Some volunteers with no previous experience in engineering have even learned enough through mentoring to begin their own new careers as developers.)
BoomTown was one of the first supporter companies providing volunteers, wifi, new & refurbished computers, supplies & snacks. And after a two-year + hiatus due to COVID, BoomTown Onboarding Team Manager, Thomas Hudson asked Nina Magnesson with BoomTownLOVE if he could help bring the program back. Slowly but surely the ‘band got back together’ & even found a permanent location in an abandoned room used for storing castaways at the St. Julian Devine Community Center, City of Charleston Park & Recreation building. The architecture of the room echoes a tech company-Google-esque co-working space vibe, & after a quick clean up & set up with gently used BoomTown furniture, Code.org posters & a Comcast Liftzone wifi network - the program is up and running to a waiting list of neighborhood students. When CodeON is not happening in the space, volunteers from the tech community will be holding “office hours” for anyone in the neighborhood to come in with questions about technology from how to get a computer and wifi to how to create a gmail account, pay a bill or apply for a job online. They also hope to one day hold programs for adults to learn about Google certifications and other digital career skills training that are available for free.
Contact: codeonvolunteers@gmail.com to find out more!
Huge shout out to BoomTown family members Thomas and his wife Katelyn Hudson for their time & professional expertise in helping to bring this important program back for kids in Charleston! @codeonchs
