Uncommon.org January Impact Report

We recently shared our January Impact Report to our Uncommon.org community via email, but I wanted to share it here as well for those who are not subscribed to our newsletter.

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We hope you're doing well! Things at Uncommon have gotten off to a great start in January, and we just wanted to quickly share some of the highlights with you!

Youth Coding

In January, we had 515 youths from 8 different schools enrolled in our free, after school coding program.

Over the next couple of months, we'll be rolling out our programs across 40+ schools. Our team can't wait to be teaching coding to 1,000s of youths every month!?

Bootcamps

We currently have 84 young adults enrolled in our full-time technology bootcamps across our five Harare Innovation Hubs. In January, the students finished the coding module, and have just begun their final crash course in Digital Marketing.

After this module, students will pick a track to specialize in and will be matched with 1 on 1 Mentorship for the remaining 6 months.

If you'd like to be a mentor, please shoot an email to [email protected].??

At our Nedbank Innovation Hub in Emganwini, Bulawayo, 25 students have been accepted from a large applicant pool. These students will begin as soon as our latest shipment of computers arrives from America!

We can't wait to get started there!

PS

If everyone in that picture looks amazing, that's because they are!?AND,?students across our various hubs have begun dedicating one day a week to wearing formal dress.?

One student recently stated the reasons being that, "...how you dress and present yourself often determines how you are respected and viewed by others, and you never know when someone from outside of the organization might stop by. It's important that you give off a great impression as you never know what might come from that interaction..."

This was all inspired by our Friday Inner Engineering sessions, where recent conversations have been focused on Professionalism and Work Ethic.

Guest Speakers

In January, some amazing guest speakers visited our various Hubs to meet our students.

Lionel Marumahoko (SNR) , one of our Zimbabwe Board Members, invited? David Gate , Country Director for Trade and Investment at the British Embassy,?to join for a conversation that left our students extremely inspired!

We also had the pleasure of welcoming? Munyaradzi Sydney Chinzvende , Chief Technology Officer at Zimbotech, an IT Services & Consulting business in Harare?to the Nicki Keszler Innovation Hub in Kuwadzana.

Munyaradzi spoke about entrepreneurship, website development and what it takes to start a business in the digital space.

?Workshops

We recognize that there are many people that would love to participate in our programs and learn more about the digital world, who are unable to commit to a full-time program.

For this reason, we are introducing part-time courses & workshops to better serve our communities in 2023.

In January, we hosted our first Digital Skills workshop for 16 participants at our Dzivarasekwa Innovation Hub.?

We have also launched a weekend outreach program to bring free coding lessons to youths living in marginalized communities further from our Innovation Hubs.?

Special shoutout to the Uncommon team members and students who donated time on their weekends to teach and empower!

While we have plenty more exciting news to share, we'll leave it at this for now.?

As always, none of this is amazing work is possible without the incredible support from this Uncommon community.?

Thank you for believing in our mission and empowering our team to make tech more inclusive and accessible!

With Gratitude,

Peter & the amazing Uncommon.org Team