Laptops4Developers

https://www.gofundme.com/z7q9rs-laptops4developers

The current (#Laptops4Developers) campaign that's going on right now was started for two main reasons;

1. To reduce the number of people learning Programming with Phone.
2. Reduce the unemployment rate in the country the little way we can( Just in case you are asking how bad the unemployment rate it, "The number of unemployed Nigerians rose by 3.3 million to 20.9 million in the third quarter of 2018 (Q3’18), a report from the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) has shown."

Read more at: https://www.vanguardngr.com/2018/12/unemployed-nigerians-increase-by-3-3m-to-20-9m-nbs/)

Current support

When it comes to supporting the upcoming developers in Nigeria, one man leads the way; Prosper Otemuyiwa (@unicodeveloper). Well, I can surely say more than 1000 paid Udemy course have been shared; directly or indirectly through him.

Laptops4Developers is a project created to support upcoming developers in Nigeria with;
A good laptop,
A mentorship program, and a
Programming course.
Yes, we have a lot of free course website online, but nothing beats having a mentor you draw inspiration from and can easily access on your WhatsApp or Slack, whenever you need him or her.

We actually started this small, the aim was to raise 1million naira ($2,777) to support 10 upcoming developers, well things expanded when I got flooded with DMs and comments, we had over 1000 request in less than 48 hours.

So yes, if we are able to start with 20 Developers yearly, that's a pass mark. Next year, these 20 Developers will already have a stable career and they'll join our mentor's list. Yeah, it's a continuous program.

I started out sharing programming courses late last year, I've shared over 200 paid course on Udemy to upcoming developers alongside Prosper Otemuyiwa (@unicodeveloper) VSCode courses of over 300 sponsored by James Quick on Udemy. A lot of them were sponsored by Authors and volunteers.

Later on, I discovered that a lot of these people we gave courses are coding on mobile phones and a lot on bad laptops, this is either like a waste of course or a waste of time, imagine mentoring someone who tells you he's learning React on his phone.

I also noticed this during the current Hotels.ng internship also.

So I’m starting a project to support upcoming developers with a laptop too and mentorship. (20 at a time).
We currently have a lot of people on our mentors list( Developers that have volunteered to support the programs and help mentor the developers we choose after the screening and first training process. )

Our mentor's list for #Laptops4Developers

We currently have developers from the
The software engineering team for Twitter,
We have a front end developer at Shopify,
Developers from Interswitch
and lots more. We also recently got partnership support from CodingCoach to support us with more mentors.

Fundings

We have been able to raise £1230 in 25days; the first week we started this campaign was tough, we had no single donation. Thanks to our various sponsors like
James Quick

Kent C Dodds

Hassan Djirdeh

Chris Blakely

Sarah Edo, Kevin VanGelder, Dave Stevens and lots of other amazing Developers.
Thanks a lot to you guys. We really appreciate, the dream is coming on real.

We have been getting donations also directly from Nigerians to sponsor this campaign
but the total is about just 5% of our projection, so far, we haven't been able to get a major sponsor in Nigeria, but we are counting on it. The community is really supportive.

Game of Thrones seams to be my friend but, maybe we will get a donation from them in the future.
I did try shooting my shots at HBO to support but I don't think the memo was passed on.

The developer community in Nigeria has been doing great, I wouldn't say we are self-sufficient yet, but we have quite a lot of great talents, and when The current CEO of Jumia said that we don't have developers that's why they don't employ us into programming roles, I'll love him to go ask Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Twitter, and co. Yes, I could start listing out developers I know that currently work there.smile

I won't say much about our talented youths, but I'm pretty sure Microsoft beats Jumia from any angle, so if Microsoft, Google, and the likes value us, that's a pass mark.

I reached out to The Dev Community on Twitter and they were really supportive on this; Hence this article,

Curent Reach

Over the past 25 days, we've started this campaign, we've gotten about 1.7million impressions on just twitter alone.

So if you've been a supporter, please keep supporting, we will surely make this campaign a success together

This is the GOfundme link to this project.

If we can get lots of people to donate even just $10. This project will be a success.

Lots of Tech Companies have recycle policies on their laptops, these old laptops could be sent over to support us. If any organization would require more information as regards to training and planning procedures for this campaign. I'll entertain emails and respond as fast as I can.

-More updates to come.

-Akintunde Sultan
akintundesultan@gmail.com