Groundbreaker, Empowering Women in Tech in Uganda

BobWP:
Hey, it’s BobWP here and I’m at CloudFest 2024. I have a very exciting episode. We haven’t done a lot here, but this one is a special one because I was able to meet one of the most fantastic nonprofits I met called Groundbreaker. I have two wonderful guests to explain a little bit more about this, so I’m going to hand it over to our first guest, have her introduce herself, tell us a little bit about it, and then we’re just talk a little bit more about the hackathon and the event itself.

Leoni:
Thank you Bob. Hi everyone. My name is Leoni. I’m a co-founder of Groundbreaker. We are a nonprofit and started a very exciting new program last year. It’s called Groundbreaker Talents. It’s a residential scholarship program in Uganda. We have a huge campus and we want to give young women from financially constrained backgrounds access to a career in tech and after 12 months we want to see them entering a career in the tech industry. Last year at the Hackathon, I launched a program. We didn’t really have anything yet. I didn’t move to Uganda yet. We didn’t have a team and the hackathon fundraised for one scholarship to fund it and I promised them that we would bring one of our scholars with us next year, which is now 2024. And I didn’t really know if it would work, but luckily it did work and we were so excited to finally get a visa for one of our scholars who’s going to introduce herself now too. And she participated in the hackathon and it really showed us how much people can learn in such a short period of time if they get really good training and access to an opportunity and excited for everything to come.

BobWP:
So speaking of the hackathon, I want to hear the experience now. I was there, I merely looked around and judged it, but I know you were hands-on having it all the time. So yeah, tell us a little bit more about yourself and then let’s go into the hackathon and what your experience was there.

Vanessa:
Hi everyone. My name is Nalugya Vanessa , a student at Groundbreaker Talent in Uganda. I joined Groundbreaker Talent last year in June. That’s when the program started and I’m one of the students who entered the first cohort hoping to finish this in 2024 this year in June. And looking forward to entering into the tech space, which I’ve already got experience on during the hackathon, I was so happy to participate in the hackathon because not every person gets that chance to interact with a lot of developers, but it was a dream come true. During the hackathon on the first day I thought I couldn’t make it because I saw very many projects and I was still indecisive of what I wanted to take on board. But eventually after the pitch I got interested in a certain project for public sector transparency funding and it was really amazing In the following days we had a lot of teamwork, which I loved the most.

I learned so much because I was also putting the skills I had got earlier from gun breaker talents in the 10 months of writing Python code into action. And it was really nice. I really loved it. There were very many people in our team all doing different things and I learned a lot from them. I learned teamwork, I learned that time is key because we literally spent 2,400 hours writing code and that was really massive. On the day of presentation, I had to present for my team, which was like a blessing talking code in front of all the tech industry. There were very many developers and it was really interesting for me. I represented the group and eventually we won a Dream Team award. So it is like my first award from everything I’ve been doing during the last 10 months and it’s a dream come true. I hope to get more awards and thanks to Groundbreaker Talents that I am who I am today.

BobWP:
All I can say is thank you and everybody else at the hackathon. Like I said, I was totally impressed. I am not a developer and I’m glad I’m not, but I’m glad there’s a lot of smart people that do it and make my life easier. So let’s kind of wrap this up and then I’m going to let people know about another upcoming show. It can be anything. The overall experience of CloudFest. I mean we’re here with, I don’t know how many people they predicted 8,000 people. You have a booth. It’s just been nonstop. We’re on the last day of it. And do you have any particular experiences or your impression of it and yeah, anything that you want to say about the actual event?

Leoni:
I think for us it was really special to see the interest of the industry. It’s one thing me always preaching how amazing our talents are in Uganda. It’s another thing for them actually to meet one of the talents and get to know it themselves and fastest Groundbreaker. It’s really important to actually work with the tech industry hand in hand because it makes no sense to just give. People have amazing talent in Uganda but then nobody knows about it and unfortunately the perception of Africa is often so negative and we really want to change this because there are so many amazing young women, especially there. And it was really cool to see so much interest of the industry to actually not see this as a pure charity project, but really see this as an amazing chance to foster a new talent pipeline. And I had so many amazing conversations, so much interest in the program and people really loved it. And I think that’s our fruits now that we harvested because it was a very intense year, but we’re very happy and I think CloudFest showed us that it actually works and how important it’s really,

Vanessa:
My experience at CloudFest has been really good because I had never been in such a community with many people. First it was a bit terrifying because I could see very many faces, but here we are all human beings. I got used and I loved the fact that very many people could come to our booth to get to know about Groundbreaker talent. That means that there are literally very many people out there who would love to support good talent in Africa. So it’s really amazing. I love the fact that I’ve got to connect with very many people in terms of networking and most of them are like-minded people. So we are always talking about technology. I really love it. There are also those ones who talk about different skills, soft skills, how to communicate to people, some interested in being mentors and I really love that. What I would love to say about CloudFest is that I would like to extend my sincere gratitude to all of the people who have got to know about Groundbreaker Talents and they are really eager to support us in any way. Yeah, thanks to them. They’re really changing lives out there.

BobWP:
So what I’m going to do to close out, of course I want to have you tell us where people can find more information out about groundbreaker and if you have any active social accounts, if you want to share those, they can search for it there. But yeah, I’m sure there’s going to be some people, this is going to pique their interest. So where do they go?

Leoni:
So the website is grant packer.org. We are very active on LinkedIn especially. That’s where most information are. Have a really cool newsletter and if you have any questions you can just drop me an email. It’s leoni@grroundbreaker.org and we are always happy to hear from everybody who’s interested be it in terms of sponsorship. We’re always looking for amazing mentors. I think that’s the right platform for that. Software developers, anybody with a tech background who would like to mentor one of our talents. So yeah, reach out if that sparks your interest.

BobWP:
Okay, well I want to thank you both for taking a little bit of time out of the CloudFest here and I want everybody to know that we are, this was a very short one, give you a nice introduction in their experiences here. But we’re going to be having a show here soon. Matt Cromwell from GiveWP is going to be participating in that. And our host Birgit will also be in Birgit’s been mentoring. So we’re going to get into more of a deep dive. And especially for those that are listening that are companies, you’re going to learn about this wonderful resource you have now for potential members of your team because I know they’re always looking for qualified, good developers, and I have a feeling that but ever comes out of Groundbreaker is very, very qualified. So everybody, thank you. This will probably be the last one here at CloudFest. And yeah, stay tuned for that next show.