Addressing the Digital Gap for Ugandan Students
74% of Ugandans between the ages of 15-25 do not have jobs. The majority of them are young women who have either dropped out of school due to poverty or lack digital skills for better jobs because the public schools do not teach with technology. In October 2019, Cadence sponsored a Team4Tech project and Cadence employee volunteers helped launch the first community makerspace in Uganda with the nonprofit Women in Technology Uganda (WITU). The Cadence Team4Tech team donated maker equipment and developed workshops to build WITU’s staff’s capacity to empower girls and women with technology skills.
Impact Leveraged Through Community Makerspace
Since then, the impact has been amazing:
- Nearly 200 girls and young women have participated in technology workshops that the Cadence volunteers helped the staff develop. These workshops, ranging from digital literacy and digital marketing to 3D printing and coding, provide access to STEM skills not taught in schools and empower students to solve challenges in their community.
- More than 70 women have developed key business and technology skills to grow their businesses through the entrepreneurship workshops designed by the Cadence team.
- Over 100 students participated in a hackathon to learn skills such as developing a business idea and pitching to introducing technology such as 3D printing.
Volunteers and Students Both Benefit from Enriching Experiences
- One of the Cadence volunteers, Nick Heaton, joined WITU’s board after the project. He and his Cadence colleagues have raised money to upgrade the makerspace internet, sponsor graduates from WITU’s entrepreneurship program with start-up capital, and provide food for WITU students in the slums who suffer due to the COVID crisis.
- The entrepreneurship workshops designed by the Cadence team are really changing lives. For example, they helped Nyafwono Florence develop skills to grow her business almost 300%, enabling her to send her child to a better school and also pay the school fees for her younger brother who had previously dropped out of school due to a lack of funds.
Get Involved with Team4Tech and Our Partners
Are you employed in the tech industry and looking for corporate volunteer opportunities in the Bay Area? Are you a corporation interested in increasing your corporate social impact programs? Team4Tech is continually launching new projects impacting global education and building relationships with new corporate partners who are able to lend technical expertise to the global nonprofit sector.
Interested in learning more about Team4Tech’s partnerships with Ugandan NPOs and more projects with Cadence Design Systems?
You can learn about past tech industry volunteer experiences and how they developed leadership skills and created social impact on LinkedIn. Don’t forget to sign up for the Team4Tech mailing list to stay informed about new corporate social impact projects and how you can support the global edtech mission of Team4Tech.
