Code Your Future

• Code Your Future
• Next Tech Girls
• Madiha Khan, CapGemini

Thank you so much.

I'm not nervous at all.

I was told this was going to be just a few people.

As Dave said, I wasn't supposed to be here.

I was supposed to be Afshar, and you got me instead.

Those are his words, not mine.

But I hope I will do it just as much as Afshar would have done.

So if you bear with me, I'd just like to take 10 minutes of your time and talk to you about this wonderful organization called Code Your Future.

So Code Your Future, what are they?

Code Your Future is a not-for-profit organization, and the main mission is to train the training program led by professionals whose aim is to bring positive change to anyone facing barriers to getting the skills needed to find meaningful work.

And meaningful work is anything that allows you to apply your skills, your knowledge, do things that you enjoy, things that will also bring you good money and make you live a good life, not barely above poverty line.

And so Code Your Future tries to do that for people, and those people can include refugees, asylum seekers, and everybody else you see on here.

The reason being, actually, before I do that, maybe I should tell you why this matters.

This is me.

As of a couple of years ago, I am one of those people who was long-term unemployed.

I was not eligible for any social aid whatsoever, and I wasn't up to date on skills.

Now, I know some people might look at me and think, "She doesn't look like that."

It is a thing we do.

We can be biased by looks, by how you talk, how you look, whatever.

But I was one of those people, and the reason that I was was because I have lived in this country for a good number of years.

And then the home office lost my passport.

They lost my passport, my application, and for the better part of four years, I was battling with them saying, "You lost it."

They're saying, "Well, we don't recognize you."

And I'm saying, "I have every evidence that you lost it."

And I have, of course you apply, you have, you know, there's the system and method of doing things, and it's been done.

And I don't know if anybody else has ever experienced that.

If you are a migrant into this country, sometimes things happen, and it just takes a turn for the worse.

And you're sitting there thinking, "I don't know what to do.

Should I leave?

Should I stay?"

And even if you wanted to leave, you still need your passport.

And you're saying to the home office, "Well, you've lost my passport.

Can I have it back?

What do I need to do?"

Or give me something that says, "You've lost it."

And they go, "No.

Yeah, whatever."

So in the end, you spend thousands of pounds trying to find a lawyer that can then fight your battles for you.

And in the midst of all of that, it doesn't mean, because I have studied, I've been to uni, I have a degree, I think I'm intelligent to a degree.

But you can't work because you don't have your paperwork complete.

You can't do anything.

And then they say things like, "You're also not eligible for any social aid whatsoever."

So on top of the fact that you cannot work to earn money, you don't have any right to any social aid, you then can't, you know, apply to housing or to rent because landlords get in trouble if they think that you are not eligible for all of that.

It is a tough world out there for anyone who experiences anything like that.

And I wouldn't wish that on my worst enemy.

So I went on for years and couldn't develop skills because no one wants to do anything with you because they would have to pay if they're caught training or giving jobs to people who they deem not eligible to do any of those things.

And so what do you do?

You can go online.

There's only so much you can teach yourself by yourself online via the University of YouTube and the likes of it.

But then you still have to put things in practice.

But most importantly, you have to earn money.

I am a parent and I need to feed my child.

It's like, where do you go from there?

Fast forward two years later, I'm a software engineer now.

And as a matter of fact, I'm now working as a director for an amazing organization called Next Tech Girls.

I went into this organization on purpose because the organization that wanted the main mission is to breach the skills and gender gap in the tech industry.

So we're trying so hard to work by inspiring the young girls in education today to become tomorrow's women in tech.

And I wanted to do that for a number of reasons.

Number one, I think that women have got the short end of the straw as a grown woman.

And as a grown woman, there's a lot of things that becomes a barrier for you.

It's experiences, you know, life experiences is the knowledge that you have or don't have as it were skills and so much more.

So I'm thinking if we can capture kids from a very early age, i.e. girls, and tell them you can do this, you have the wherewithal to do it, go for it, and start debunking those myths and stereotypes, it would maybe help them know that as a long-term investment, you should really look into tech and go forth with it.

As opposed to doing what I have done, which is become a, what's the word, a career switcher is the best they like to, the kind of time they give me.

And I sit there thinking, I don't even have a career in the first place, so what am I switching to?

But you see, whilst we laugh about this, here's the beauty of it.

Code Your Future made me realize that as a matter of fact, you did have a career.

Because I couldn't work legally, and I can now, by the way, I don't think I can be a director without doing it legally, but anyways, because I couldn't, I went into doing all sorts.

And to do them, I had to say, can I volunteer to work for you?

I don't know how many people now, right here, if somebody comes to you and says, I can do this for you, but I want cash in hand, a lot of people look at them suspiciously, like why?

I should pay you through a check or a bank.

But if you don't have the means to be a legally recognized person in this country, you can't even open a bank account.

It is as bad as that.

So I walked around looking for work that can pay me either cash, or I say I want to volunteer just so that I don't go mad in the house doing nothing.

But of course, because I've done all of that and nobody's paying me a check every month, I kind of assumed that meant I don't have skills.

It means I've not done anything.

So as it were, trying to come to Code Your Future and do software development would be my way of saying now I've got skills.

And one of the great things they did for me was they actually know that's wrong.

In as much as you've done all the other things you've done, just because you haven't been paid does not mean you've not been developing your skills.

So the great thing about what they did for me was that they showed me how to apply all those skills I acquired when nobody was paying me and attach them to what I'm now doing as a software engineer.

So that's just my story.

I wanted to share that from the depths of my heart to say it may seem, or if somebody saw me on the street and the way I talk, they'd think you've gone to a high level university and a few people from where I come from, I'm from Nigeria, would say did you go to a really hot posh school?

I didn't.

But I have been growing, polishing skills and building myself up any which way I can.

And so when you're able to then think outside of the box, like okay, I'm going to do this thing, software engineering, but all my life I've been doing things as a media, in events planning, how do I bring that into this?

Code Your Future helped me see that.

That's just my own story and is a success story.

Now if I just share very quickly other stories with you, and I got permission by the way before I did this.

Madi, her story, who was actually in tech and then she left for a long time because of family, came back and just couldn't find a job.

And every job she's finding is like really below what she's supposed to be at.

She has come to Code Your Future to help her kind of like upskill and get the skills she needed to get back into work.

And now she's working for Capgemini.

Another one is Sadia's story.

Sadia, and again this is another story about a migrant who's moved over.

She's been working in the country where she's from.

She's got skills.

But of course translating skills to another country sometimes can be difficult.

Translating qualifications as well can also be difficult.

So Sadia faced that problem.

She also had kids.

And so trying to make sure that she could study and gain qualification or the skills she needed was a bit difficult.

Coming to Code Your Future however helped her do that.

And it helped her by making sure that Sadia, when it comes to childcare, it wasn't a problem.

Code Your Future offered not just laptop for her to study with.

I think they also offered internet access as well, transport as well as childcare.

There's a lot of people I could tell you the same story.

I've got a couple of my classmates in here today who can testify to that.

And being a parent, they did the same for me.

In my case, I am so lucky that my little monkey over there is grown.

And so he follows me everywhere.

And one of the things they did was make sure that if I'm in class, they put him somewhere where it's not a crèche per se, but they kind of like created the crèche for me.

So what I would do is have volunteers who would entertain him, be with him all day to make sure that I don't get disturbed whatsoever so I can just focus and study.

It takes a lot to do this.

It takes, as we say, and as everybody says, it takes a village.

In this case, it takes a whole world as a matter of fact.

It takes everyone to be able to find people who would give you their time, people who would give you their knowledge, people who would give you their money and say, "Hey, whatever you need, as long as it means that you are going to become somebody better than where you're coming from."

I could have by the time my paperwork was sorted started from scratch and said, "You know what?

I'm going to go back and maybe, I don't know, clean.

I don't have anything against cleaners.

I'm just saying for a parent with a child, that's not going to bring money in for me to look after my child and myself."

So it's all those things that Code Your Future does that makes it such a beautiful community for me and an amazing organization for anyone who finds themselves in this kind of situations that I have described.

With that said, I want you all to know that the beauty of Code Your Future is its diversity.

It welcomes everyone and anyone.

As long as you say, "I need help of any kind," come to Code Your Future and the doors are always open.

One of the things they've told me, and this is what I've graduated, found a job in working now, but I still have my one-on-one with my buddy via Code Your Future every Tuesday.

They told us, "We won't let go unless you let go.

As long as you're within Code Your Future, it is a lifetime family thing."

That is so beautiful because in as much as I studied, and I did well beyond what I expected myself to do because I'd never, before Code Your Future, I never thought about, "If you told me the word coding, I wouldn't know what you meant."

By the time I had finished and now I know that, "Okay, you know what I'm now a software engineer," it was still scary for me because it's still a new sort of skill set that I don't know if I can do well.

They held my hand through my first job and they're still holding my hand to date.

Why am I telling you all of this?

I'm telling you all of this because today, this is what I'm looking for for Code Your Future.

I want all of you please to think about your companies and see if your company will be interested in hiring trainee graduates for any role, any role at all within your company.

There are so many avenues for hiring graduates.

The graduates from Code Your Future, I may be biased.

As a matter of fact, I am biased but in a good way, in a very good way because in my class of 40, maybe 40, 40, yeah, I think I'm the 40th.

Everybody else is like, "They're amazing."

My classmates are amazing as software developers.

They are incredible.

I can testify to that that you can hire or your company can hire graduates who are incredibly passionate about what they do because we all felt like we didn't have the choice or option.

Now that we've been given it, we did the best we can with it.

I'm looking for people and companies who can donate to our program to support the trainees.

Like I said, it takes a village.

It takes a whole world, in fact.

We want people who can donate to our program through maybe fundraising activities, donate laptops.

We want lecture spaces.

If your company is the type that has a space where you think people can come in and study, can I just add a caveat to that?

It must come with coffee and tea.

No, it doesn't have to.

Lecture spaces, that would be great.

Also, we're looking for corporate volunteering.

Tech person in leadership who can come to our class and be able to inspire the trainees that we have.

I'm just going to go through this very, very quickly.

Diverse talent pipeline, the thing you can get if your company were to partner with Code Your Future.

It will help your branding and your PR.

Obviously, that means that you're going to look amazing whilst the people who you hire are going to have jobs.

Of course, corporate volunteering, this is a good way to get your company staff to volunteer and do something worthwhile.

Actually, here, this is Ellie.

Ellie trained me a couple of years ago.

She's a software engineer herself.

She was my tutor.

I remember having such great difficulty coming to terms with Dom.

She's like, "Gail, what's your problem?"

Then I thought I figured it out.

Then no JS came up.

I'm like, "This is evil.

We're not doing this."

Ellie made it possible.

This is a good way of ...

This is Ellie's testimony.

This is a good way of getting your staff to do something worthwhile whilst feeling good.

We've partnered with Capgemini.

It's just a quick partner story, Capgemini, Slack and a few others.

There's a few others here.

This is important to me.

I wanted to show you that there are so many different pathways.

When I talked about hiring graduates from Code Your Future, these are the different employment paths that you can hire them for.

Numbers, I love numbers.

I think you do too.

Check out all these numbers, which I think are incredible.

One of the things that really touched me is the fact that 78% of trainees are from ethnic minorities.

I make up one of those numbers. 35% are average age of over 40.

Again, that's me.

Then of course the 40, another one that makes really great impact on me is the 40% female trainees.

This is one thing that Code Your Future really, really pushes for, making sure that more than half of their trainees are women.

That's incredible.

These are some of our partners who are currently working with us.

Again, if you partner with us, you can champion social mobility, but most importantly, you're launching careers not just in tech, but for the future.

You're giving somebody or somebody's a job, which is incredible.

Take it from a woman who hasn't been in employment for years and years to finally get the opportunity to do so and in tech, you'll be changing the world.

Trust me.

If you want to learn more, please scan the QR code or talk to me.

My name is Gail Thompson-Nagiruke.

I am now a software engineer.

Thank you to Code Your Future. [applause]