TeenTech Hub Year in Review 2022

Hello,

I’ll like to believe that we all accept that the human mind is amazing. For example, using our minds, we were able fly in the sky with the birds by building airplanes. In addition, we put our kind in space, and sent robots to Mars. The list goes on.

The first time I had the opportunity to teach coding to young children, I was further marveled by how wonderful our minds are. Kids are smart, creative and I might argue they can run circles around us at learning new things. 3 years later (last year), I still find being amongst the kids we train at TeenTech Hub as fun and intriguing as day 1.

That brings us to the subject of this post. Last year, through out, my team and I engaged with hundreds of students from age 4–18 teaching them how to code in a fun and creative way. This post will summarize our top work from the year. Follow along to get a glance of all the amazing things we managed to achieve together.

Rebranding TeenCode Africa (Benue)

In January, in a WhatsApp status, I shared a post that I’ll be looking for program manager to join our team at BuildSpace. We’re a small team so this person may have to manage 3–4 programs.

TeenCode Africa was one of our outreaches through which we teach children in secondary school how to code. Together with our new program manager, we rebranded TeenCode Benue to TeenTech Hub to reflect our new objectives and approach better.

TeenTech Hub will continue to support kids that attend public schools in rural towns in North-central and Northern Nigeria with free hands-on coding and computer science education via a school club.

By March, we announced this rebranding.

Children’s Day 2022 Coding Roadshow

To celebrate children in the towns we have our clubs, we held 2 roadshows in two cities on May 27th.

One of the events was at the Children of Mary Orphanage, Otukpo, Nigeria. The second event was at Government College, Makurdi. At these events, we played coding games, and had tech talks tailored to get young kids excited about computer science. We also featured workshops on coding with Scratch.

I attended the roadshow at Otukpo, and as always, I was amazed by how amazing the kids there learn new concepts and build upon them.

Regular Club Activities

Through 2022, we had 4 active clubs across schools and orphanages. These clubs meet weekly during the normal school term.

Our clubs grew to reach over 150 students in 2022. That’s over 100 children getting to write their first computer program before they complete secondary school.

What’s even more fascinating is that our clubs are active in institutions where computer science isn’t offered as a subject. We’re proud of not leaving kids in such locations behind in learning computer science.

TeenTech Hub Summer Bootcamp

In August, schools in Nigeria were on the third term break. This is the longest school break in the country, so we decided to take advantage of it.

Our team planned and executed a 1 week bootcamp from our office at BuildSpace Technology Hub. At the bootcamp, we were able to teach our curriculum to kids that we won’t usually reach at their schools because our club may not be there yet.

Each day, we had hands-on training and grouped participants for assignments. At the end of the day, the best team wins a price. It was a fun experience with both parents and their children excited about it.

To wrap things with the bootcamp, we took all our volunteer teachers out for a lunch at Chicken Republic’s new place in Makurdi ;)

Signing off 2022 With a New School Club

We signed off 2022 with getting a green light from the amazing principal of Government Girls College, Makurdi to start a new club at the school.

We didn’t waste time to take off our club at this school as we had club meetings in November and December before the Christmas holiday.

Having a club in a girls only school helps add even more diversity to our effort of taking computer science and coding to young people. We can’t wait to resume in 2023.

Wrapping Up

I’ll like to wrap up by thanking everyone that made 2022 a success. To mention a few; Thank you to our volunteers, my team members at BuildSpace and of cause, BuildSpace Technology Hub for all the resource to keep this club going.

Last but not the least, thanks to the Scratch team for all the education they provided to our team via their SEC cohort. I’ll likely write another full post dedicated to our wonderful experience at SEC so far.

Happy New Year if you’re reading this in January. You can follow TeenTech Hub on Instagram and Twitter to keep up with our story.