Rising to the Challenge

Last month—against the odds—Dayhana Benitez, 24, became a junior-level frontend developer. She completed the Software Academy For IT through Argentine nonprofit Fundación formar , supported by EMpower. Software Academy For IT is an intensive six-month work-study programme in which students get paid for their training hours while learning how to provide programming services to real-world clients.

Originally from the town of Yegros Caazapa, Paraguay, Dayhana immigrated with her family to Buenos Aires, Argentina. There she attended a technical high school with a seven-year graduation track but took time off school in year five to care for an aunt fighting cancer. Dayhana missed so much school caring for her aunt and aunt’s children that she fell behind and needed to repeat the grade.

Dayhana returned to repeat the year in 2020, and then came COVID-19. All of her schooling was moved online to comply with the strict quarantine in Buenos Aires.

“Basically, I was a victim of the pandemic,” she said.

Still having to care for her family and without having her own computer, Dayhana was forced to drop out of school.

While Dayhana stayed at home with her family during the COVID lockdown, she would go into her older brother’s room and watch him as he worked on projects for his senior-level programming job.

“I saw all the codes, and they…intrigued me,” said Dayhana.

Her brother encouraged her to start learning programming, but she felt intimidated. Her brother was determined to help her.

He heard about an introduction to programming course offered by Formar from a friend enrolled in it. The friend gave him the contact information, and her brother gave it to Dayhana.

“He told me it was a great opportunity, and that they would teach [to programme] from level zero,” Dayhana said.

Formar specialises in equipping socio-economically vulnerable young people with job training and placement in the IT sector, as well as supporting them to become entrepreneurs. In addition to providing classes on programming, personal finance, and English, they help participants to become taxable workers in the formal labour market in Argentina.

Dayhana applied and was accepted to the initial programme, which partnered with the Argentine edtech organisation Digital House. When she completed the course in 2021, Dayhana became a trainee-level programmer (the most basic level of programmer). However, she still needed work experience to land a job as a programmer, and she still had to care for her family.

To earn money and take her mind off familial troubles, she took a job in gastronomy, but eventually had to quit due to the hours. The aunt she had been caring for died not long after. In the midst of this period of change, she received a call from Vicky Lacroze, the project manager of For IT, to tell her about the new software factory programme and encourage her to enroll in it.

The idea of For IT was to give the students from the intro course the opportunity to gain much-needed work experience in order to get jobs as programmers. They would be provided with more in-depth training in programming languages while working with clients, learn how to implement agile methodologies, and have the support of a senior programmer to act as a mentor throughout the course.

Within her cohort, Dayhana currently works on a team of 10 students, who are developing a client service website for a large kinesiology clinic. They have been able to learn and utilise programming languages for frontend development. They have also learnt how to use the agile project platform Jira, allowing them to manage and coordinate their workload.

Vicky has acted as a mentor to the students and helped them develop their soft skills, particularly teamwork and communication.

“With [Vicky]...more than anything, I’ve improved [my] communication and how to express myself,” said Dayhana.

She now feels like she can communicate better not only with her team, but with her boyfriend’s family—transferring what she’s learned in Formar to her personal life.

When the software factory ends, Dayahana hopes to be hired by the same company for which her older brother works. They have already asked for her CV, and she has begun learning another programming language the job would require.

She’s not intimidated though: “We learn as we rise to the challenge.”