E36: Creating a Brighter Tomorrow for the Future Coders with Melissa Sariffodeen of Canada Learning Code

Melissa Sariffodeen is the CEO and Co-Founder of Canada Learning Code. She is a celebrated digital literacy advocate who is dedicated to ensuring that women and youth have the critical skills, confidence, and opportunities that they need to thrive in our increasingly digital world. She is a graduate of the Richard Ivey School of Business and is currently pursuing her Master’s in Education Policy at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education at the University of Toronto. She taught herself how to build websites from scratch using HTML when she was 11 years old and has been coding ever since.

 

She also won the 2017 RBC Canadian Women Entrepreneur award for Social Change Award

 

It was originally called Ladies learning code and it started in 2011 out of self-interest for us group of 4 woman who wanted to learn more technical skillset. They wanted to create this opportunity to learn to code and that time in toronto there was not any opportunity or explicitly welcoming for women or for beginners to learn to how to code.

 

Episode overview:

 

In this episode, I get to chat with Melissa Sariffodeen of Canada Learning Code where she provided us with a thorough explanation on how important coding is to the younger generations. Here you will find that Melissa and her colleagues really feel the need to empower, educate and inspire teachers to introduce coding to their students.

 

Their popular course is the Intro to HTML and CSS where the workshop will allow you a day or over a day or evenings to build your own website from scratch or maybe edit a website that you already have. The other popular course is Data Analysis and Visualization where they focus on Big Data and Artificial Intelligence (AI) where the desire of people to know how to work and manipulate it visually. They also teach arts and music making things fun and engaging like creating emojis, prints and graphic designs.

 

For every four learners there is always one technical expert who is there to work with you the entire day for the program and to help you learn.

 

In this episode, you will also understand the importance of why learning how technology is built and learning coding is going to be critical for every role into the future whether you want to start your own business or whether you are working in a company and you want to jump-start your career; it provides a way of understanding (connecting the dots) of people.

 

How can you support Canada Learning Code:

 

If you are technical or run a technical team; volunteering and giving back or hosting our program to their chapters/programs running around 35 different cities around the country; they are always looking for technical mentors or spaces to host their programs because they don’t have a physical space anywhere. They are also looking for innovative content on sponsorship, donations or charity.

Resources Mentioned:

Tips:

“Get started” Understand how coding works and how technology works Launching fast, failing fast, elevating fast Try to serve the best Do not be afraid to try different things Progress is an achievement as well as getting things out there Do not be afraid to fail forward

 

Tools:

Slack Hootsuite

 

Book:

The Radical Candor by Kim Scott How We can Win by Anthony Lacavera

 

Hootspot:

GTA for food

Nelson BC for retreat

 

About Company:

 

Canada Learning Code is a national not-for-profit organization championing digital literacy education, working nation-wide and across all sectors to equip Canadians with technical skills. To date, the organization has taught over 80,000 learners through their programs, which are offered in over 30 cities across the country.

 

Founded as Ladies Learning Code in 2011, the organization has evolved to run programming for adults, youth and educators through programs Ladies, Girls, Kids, Teens and Teachers Learning Code. Canada Learning Code’s goal is to create 10 million technology learning experiences for Canadians over the next ten years.

 

Technical skills are a tool of empowerment, and it is the organization’s mission to ensure that all Canadians - particularly those who are currently underrepresented in the tech sector - have access to learn these critical skills and be active participants in the digital age.

 

Connect with Melissa:

 

Website: Canada Learning Code

Twitter: @learningcode @melsariffodeen

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/melissasariffodeen/

Instagram: @learningcode

Facebook: Canada Learning Code Facebook

 

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