Target reached!
With a further £2,000 we could provide life changing tech education for another 6 of...
Support tech education for street youth in Lebanon
Lebanon
Aim
Help us give vulnerable children and former street youth in Lebanon an alternative to exploitative work through tech education.
**MATCH FUNDING Announcement**
A donor has offered to MATCH FUND any donation to our crowdfunding campaign until 10 April. If you donate £50, CodeBrave will now receive £100!
About CodeBrave
We train marginalised children and former street youth in digital skills, coding and robotics, helping them to secure jobs that are not only decent and well-paid but future proof too. We run our programme in a shelter for homeless children with nowhere else to go. With your help, we hope to expand to a second shelter and to reach 60 children this year.
Former street youth are often forced into exploitative work.
Young people living in shelter often end up back on the street as soon as they leave state care. They become trapped in a cycle of poverty and exploitation, as they don't have the opportunities or marketable skills to secure decent work and break that cycle. Often the only work opportunities available to them are hard manual labour, prostitution, armed groups and begging.
Many of these young people have faced trauma, which means that even when decent opportunities arise, they can struggle to keep jobs without adequate positive experiences overcoming frustration and working in a team.
Their situation is made more difficult as Lebanon struggles to deal with the effects of the Syrian conflict next door and a growing economic crisis which has caused high youth unemployment rates, with around 1 million young people out of work.
Why is the tech sector a window of opportunity?
Tech education provides young people with marketable skills in a sector where there is a growing demand and shortage of supply in the Middle East. It also gives them access to an international online job market.
CodeBrave's curriculum incorporates opportunities to build resilience and work collaboratively so our students leave our program ready to face challenges at work and in life.
The idea is to give them the skills they need to lift themselves out of hardship, and secure work that’s not only well paid but is future proof too.
The Story So Far
CodeBrave began because co-founders Steven and Clem were working in a homeless shelter and saw that when kids were leaving the shelter at 18 they ended up back on the street, or in horrible exploitative work. One day one of the kids asked us to learn coding, which was the CodeBrave lightbulb moment!
CodeBrave has now been successfully implementing our coding and robotics programme since June 2018. In this time, our oldest children have gone from barely knowing how to use a computer, to writing the code for basic websites totally from scratch, and our younger kids have been learning to code through games and programming robots, undertaking vital preparatory work to get them onto website design. Alongside this, we ran two further projects in 2019, reaching a total of 63 children, and working with a total of 13 partners, including 8 local partners and well-known international partners like IRC and UNHCR.
This has resulted in...
- 2 students undertaking internships with Lebanese tech companies.
- 5 students worked on a commissioned electronic art project for a Beirut art and music venue, The Grand Factory.
- 7 students are building trial websites for companies based on their personal interests
- Huge improvement in students’ Maths and Science abilities.
- Students are showing increased confidence and better problem solving skills.
We want to continue developing and improving our programme in 2020 by continuing developmentally appropriate tech education of 20 children, and to engage a further 40 children.
Where Your Money Will Go
What our partners say
"I have witnessed first hand how [the CodeBrave] program impacts the youth… equipping the students with necessary technical skills...a sense of accomplishment and boosts their self confidence.... CodeBrave simply brings forth the best of both worlds: technical skills and personal development skills."
"The course has shown to be a great success at our school... [equipping the girls with] a technical and entrepreneurial skill set that would increase their employability anywhere they go... The girls' confidence increased."
What our teachers say
"Children from vulnerable or abused backgrounds never had the chance or the time to be creative, to be a child. CodeBrave gives them that chance." Hana, Child Wellness Expert at our partner institution
"I've seen a lot of changes through the months...Hamed went from literally not knowing anything to teaching himself JavaScript, React, front-end, back-end [coding]." Hani, CodeBrave Mentor/Trainer
What our students say
“I don’t want to play football today, I’m finishing my code.” (Talal, 15)
"I like in CodeBrave that I'm learning 5 times a week and this is helping my future." (Khalil 15)
“When is the coding teacher arriving? We want to start” (Hamed, 16)
Meet the Team!
CodeBrave Lebanon:
Steven Wilbur, Director & Co-Founder: Steven (far right) is a former teacher and an expert in child psychology with eight years experience. He has degrees in Educational Psychology (Washington) and Math (N. Texas). He has been running an informal school at Home of Hope, a shelter for former street youth outside Beirut, for over three years.
Clem Brown, Director & Co-Founder: Clem (centre left) has 5 years experience working in the humanitarian and development sector in the Middle East. Prior to founding CodeBrave, Clem was a data analyst, including for the UN. She has a M.A. in Arabic & Islamic Studies from Oxford University.
Razan Ali Hussein, Lead Robotics Trainer: Razan (centre right) teaches coding through interactive craft-based robotics. She is a full-stack web developer by training, with a degree from Lebanese International University.
Rana Dimashkieh, Coding Trainer: Rana has 6 years experience teaching programming and a Masters in Educational Technology. She is the author of a book on HTML/CSS for KS3+.
Hani Janzi, CodeBrave Mentor/Trainer: Hani (far left) is a self-taught full stack web developer. He has taught kids of all ages from Scratch to Web Development. He is currently pursuing a Bachelor's degree in Physics at Beirut Arab University (BAU)
Nourhan Mrad, Robotics Trainer: Nourhan has trained youth in Robotics for three years experience and has a degree in Computer Science from Lebanese International University.
CodeBrave UK:
Tatiana Woodhouse, Grants Manager: Tatiana has a background in project management and child protection in the humanitarian sector, with three years experience in Lebanon. She has degrees in Ancient and Modern History (Oxford) and Human Rights and Humanitarian Action (Sciences-Po PSIA).
Joe Norman, Communications Lead: Joe has two years experience as an Account Manager at M&C Saatchi in London, and a degree in Arabic & Philosophy (Durham).
Help us use tech education to give former street youth a brighter future!
Tech programs for refugees and marginalised people are being established all over the world, in Pakistan, Germany, Switzerland and the UK.
Support us so that we can bring this amazing and pioneering concept to some of the most marginalised children and youth in Lebanon, where it is so badly needed.
By supporting these vulnerable children gain employment when they reach 18, you have the potential to impact not only their lives, but the lives of their immediate families by pulling them out of poverty.
For more information please check out our website at codebrave.org.
This project successfully funded on 10th April 2020