My Django Girls Experience
It all started as it usually does, with a girl who is intrigued and excited about the internet and hence, enthusiastic to learn more about it. This led me to travel 7 hours by road to Ogbomoso, a town I had never been to or know anyone just to attend a Django Girls workshop on the 7th of May, 2016. It seemed to surprise everyone why someone would travel such a distance just to attend the workshop and learn. However, the fact that I had no place to stay in Ogbomoso availed for me, the opportunity to spend my time there with the awesome coaches at the hotel we were lodged in.
As a participant in the workshop, I had one coach who has been a mentor to me since then. However, I had the privilege of attending the coaches thank you dinner which changed my life completely. I just knew then that this was a start of something great. They encouraged me to bring Django girls to the city of Minna where I reside and that is how my journey began.
Django Girls Minna was birthed and inspired by the organizers and coaches of Django Girls Ogbomoso. As I was doing my Industrial training at that period in time, Django Girls Minna was scheduled to hold at the end of my training. To gain more “Django girls workshop” experience to enable me to organize a successful workshop in my city, I volunteered to coach 3 awesome girls at the Django Girls Port Harcourt Workshop on the 23rd of July, 2016.
Django Girls Minna workshop held on the 10th of September 2016 and was organized with the help of Emmanuel. 31 awesome Ladies between the ages of 11 and 33 participated in the workshop where 10 coaches’ volunteered to coach the girls at the workshop.
My coach at Django girls Ogbomoso (Eyitemi Egbejule) took a night bus and came all the way from Lagos (This was 10 – 12 hours journey) to attend the event. I was awestruck at how committed he was and everyone was inspired by his resolve making them realise learning and teaching at Django Girls Workshop was a worthwhile endeavour.
The girls had an inspiring talk from Mrs Caroline Alenoghena (PhD), a female Telecommunication Engineering Lecturer of the Federal University of Technology, Minna. She told the participants the story of a deaf frog who could not hear all what “Nay Sayers” had to say and was able to reach its goal at the top of the tower. She further admonished the ladies to take advantage of the opportunity afforded them by the workshop to learn to program as it will turn out to be a useful skill regardless of the field they may find themselves.
We had the founder of Abocoders, Simi Olusola join us for the event. She told the girls what Abocoders is about and invited them to join and visit their centre at Minna. As a result of the impact Django Girls Minna made, Django Girls Abuja was born and organized by Abocoders in January 2017. Abocoders coders went ahead to organized the third workshop in the city of Lagos for internally displaced persons (IDPs) on the 28th of February 2017.
Also, one of our awesome female coach (Tolu Alabi), keyed into the initiative and Django girls Kaduna was organized and held on the 10th of December 2016. She didn’t stop there as Django girls Kogi is around the corner.
I could not contain my joy and excitement at how much Django girls workshops were spreading and being organized at various cities in the country Nigeria especially in the northern part. This also led my co-organizer Emmanuel to bring the good news of Django Girls to the girls in Makurdi, Benue State, this time, I co-organised.
Django Girls Makurdi held on the 25th of February 2017 where we had 26 girls in attendance 12 awesome coaches who made the event a success.
One of the participants of Django Girls Minna coincidently is my course mate in school and the moment we were back at school, we came together and worked towards organizing a workshop for the ladies on our campus (though ladies from within and outside the city were invited). This brought about Django Girls Benin City which held on the 11th of March 2017, at the University of Benin.
Django Girls Benin City was a success with 15 girls in attendance and 7 coaches. The event started with a pre-installation on Friday, 10th of February where all the necessary programs were installed in the systems of the various participants. The main workshop went well as the girls were eager to learn and they did learn a lot by the end of the workshop. To conclude the workshop, we had a little talk show where the coaches and organizers motivated the girls and encouraged them to continue in the path that they have started.
Another awesome news is that the stories of Django Girls Minna, Kaduna and Makurdi inspired and has led to the organizing of a workshop in the City of Jos. This made me realize that compared to previous beliefs, the northern part of Nigeria has lots of girls who yearn for this opportunity and are eager to learn how to build the internet.
It marks one year so far with Django girls and what a wonderful journey that has been for me. I have enjoyed and learnt from every aspect of it and I am sure that greater years lies ahead!!!
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