Today we have another article about the volunteering work our team does for causes they are passionate about. This time Olayiwola Odunsi, one of our engineers from Nigeria talks about his experiences volunteering with The Creative Kid's Zone (“TCKZone”) as a facilitator introducing kids aged 5-8 to programming.

Why I got involved

My first experience as a volunteer was during my final year at university. That year I joined a group of students who already had practical experience in programming beyond the school syllabus. The group objective was to introduce fellow students to web programming and graphics design by organising physical tutorials around the campus.

What started as a group with few members grew as other students studying computer-related and non-computer-related courses joined the group.

But my passion for teaching school kids programming was not ignited until 2018 when I had the opportunity to move to a very remote part of Nigeria. It was there that I took a part-time role to teach computer studies in a community public school. I discovered that the kids did not have access to a physical computer system and almost all of the students in the class I was teaching could not identify computer peripherals like keyboard or mouse. I've read about the digital divide problem and I could talk about it theoretically but had never experienced it myself. Growing up, I got my first desktop computer in 2006, and here I was in 2018 with kids who couldn't identify a keyboard. I saw the digital divide problem come alive beyond what I had read in books.


This discovery of how much of the STEM world the students were missing spurred me to organise computer training beyond my class with a focus on raising the awareness level of general computing and applications of every student in the school. Shortly after, I moved back to the city and forgot about the students until a friend introduced me to TCKZone in 2020.

As soon as I saw the mission statement, "To expand creativity in as many kids as possible by training and empowering them with the technological skillset.", I knew it was something I wanted to be a part of, having experienced the problem myself.

TCKZone is a fully registered not-for-profit organisation that was created in 2019 to introduce kids to technology for free. It reaches out to thousands of kids in African communities and makes them ambassadors for technology, by organizing free training to introduce them to technology, Coding, Design, Robotics, AI, Game development, Mobile app, Web development, and other STEM fields.

How it works

The volunteering process with TCKZone starts with establishing communication with the intended school in the community and initiating a coding club that interested students can join.

Based on the school curriculum and facilitator schedule, the facilitator chooses a date and time when students in the club can meet, which can be on a Friday or Saturday afternoon and is expected to last 1- 2 hours but sometimes might take longer as the kids are always inquisitive and do not mind spending much time as possible. Also, TCKZone organises virtual and physical training that can span multiple days to empower kids with different tech-related skills such as game development, graphics design, web development and others.

Conclusion

The experience has been a fulfilling one, and it was great to see the number of positive testimonials shared by the kids and their parents.

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Reflecting its belief in supporting social good, Compuco provides 2 paid days of volunteering leave a year to all of its team members. To find out more about working with Compuco please check out our open roles.