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SPROUT Coding, a program started by Peter Kazickas, teaches young adults from high-density neighborhoods in Zimbabwe computer coding, entrepreneurship and business development skills. Just like the rest of the world, Zimbabwe was also presented with a COVID-19 crisis. "Life as we know it" stopped until further developments.
However, Peter Kazickas shares with the SPROUT supporters all the great work program has accomplished before the pandemic and is planning his next steps once the crisis is over.
Dear Friends and Family,
...While we are grateful to be together with family, we left Zimbabwe with heavy hearts and a great sense of trepidation, afraid for the trauma and hardship we’d be both entering and leaving behind.
While we’re home now in self-isolation, I wanted to first send our love to all of you. We hope that everyone is remaining safe, healthy and in good spirits during this very scary time. I also wanted to share some positive news about our team in Zimbabwe, who we think about constantly.
While we were in Zimbabwe, we were so excited to finish building and begin operating the Nicki Keszler Innovation Hub. For so many reasons, this was a dream come true, and we'd like to sincerely thank all of you who donated to help bring this project to life. We currently have 20 young adults - all were previously unemployed - who spend every morning at the Hub learning about coding and entrepreneurship. Each afternoon, those young adults head out into the community, where we're working with 6 primary & secondary schools offering free computer science lessons. If you noticed an extension cord coming out of the Hub in our first picture (above), that's because we're also using our excess solar power to provide electricity for the school's administration block. Unfortunately, things have really deteriorated in Zimbabwe and power is only available between 10pm and 4am. We are grateful to be able to support the community in this way!
We were also able to build a THIRD Innovation Hub! This project was so exciting as it was a bit different from our first two. Rather than using an old shipping container, we partnered with a public school to renovate an entire school block... Now that we've spent enough time in Zimbabwe and met the right people, we've learned how to build spaces quickly, efficiently and under budget. We are so pleased with how these turned out (pictures bellow), and what that means for future communities!
A super cool development has been that our offices - now the most modern and beautiful in all of Zimbabwe (I'm biased) - have become an attraction to corporate leaders. We've had the amazing privilege and honor of hosting the Schweppes Zimbabwe CEO - who came back the following day with his entire executive team - as well as the CEO of Masawara, a leading investment firm in Zimbabwe and a Corporate Affairs Executive from Delta Beverages, one of Zimbabwe's largest companies. Amazing opportunities have come from these meetings which I'm excited to share in a future!
One of the last updates I want to share with you is that we've begun to build an internal development team. Essentially, we've promoted our best students to become full-time developers and have opened up our services to clients all over Zimbabwe. We've long believed in the potential to take some of the burden off of our fundraising efforts by monetizing the skills we teach for free. When a client chooses us to build a website, 100% of the profit we make goes towards our program and providing free computer science & entrepreneurship education to students and young adults in underserved communities. We're very excited to build upon this initiative, which gives our students real-world experience and allows them to build their portfolio with professional projects...
While no amount of fun and exciting updates from Zimbabwe can make things at home any easier, hopefully this note did bring a smile to your face. Our team is currently safe, at home and self-isolating. We've challenged them to see what they can do in their communities to make life during coronavirus a little bit better.
Thanks to you all, they have the opportunity to be innovators and change makers. If not today with coronavirus, then certainly in the future with technologies and businesses we may not have ever experienced before. Because of you, these young adults are able to dream big, and we'll be forever thankful for that!
So we're sending lot's of love, from all of us in isolation - here in America and over there in Zimbabwe. Please stay safe and know that you really are making a difference.
Until next time,
Peter
Photos: SPROUT Coding
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