The POSSIBLE in IMPOSSIBILITY (My Experience Organizing Django Girls Workshop)

This blog post was written by Afape Ruthn Temiloluwa . Thank you Afape :) 

There is something that lies within that which is called impossibility, when you let it out it is a possibility. The success of the event was something that looked impossible. Also, this isn’t my first Django girls event, I have co-organised and also coached in several events. This was going to be organized by me and then in a strange place. 

Starting with the one I co-organized in May 2016. Opetunde Adepoju came to me to ask if I will like to assist her to organize a computer programming workshop for girls in our community together with Ruth O. Obe. It was something have always wanted to do - getting girls involved in tech because most time I go for tech outings I don’t get to see females, it’s always more of the males, so I have always be driven to help more girls know that tech is also for them. I embraced the offer and we started preparation back them in March 2016 with the support of Aisha Bello. We had close to 30 ladies who fell in love with programming that day.  

I have been C# programmer enthusiast but the workshop made me know of python and I fell in love with it.  Also after so much research, I discovered it could work well for machine learning. Then I started volunteering to coach at different Django girls event within Nigeria. A friend observing his national youth service in the eastern part of Nigeria put a call through to me and asked if I can come and organize Django Girls in the East which I accepted. I quietly let the possibility in me out and then agreed to organize the event. I applied and it was accepted. The journey began in February 2017. It was not really any easy because as the first month of applications I was having about 5 applicants I was feeling discouraged and was thinking I would probably have to cancel the workshop. Possibility never allowed me. Getting coaches was another tough one for me because it was really like there were no programmers there but with the help of social media I was able to connect to some programmers who volunteered to coach. A month to the event I was already having over 50 applicants and only picking 30 of them. 

There was a little disappointment with the venue we were supposed to use and we had to work out another location for the workshop which was really difficult. That delayed our starting time and we started the installation party around 3pm. The coaches also came a little bit late that day because they were all coming from far cities. All attendees had fun during the installation party.

On Saturday which was the second day of the event. Everything went well, we had 28 participants. We were able to work with the coaches that were available. All the participant gave feedback after the events with some of them saying they had wished it was more than a day workshop. They really appreciated the sponsors of the event. All thanks to:

Budgit, PSF and Github for sponsoring the event.

For more pictures please click on this link. Thanks.

Django Girls is a non-profit that teach programming to women all around the world. Want to help us? Support us!