STEM: Interswitch holds code week for slum children

LAGOS, Nigeria – Interswitch, a Pan-African integrated digital payments and commerce company in partnership with Slum2school Africa, recently hosted ‘Slum-to-school code week’ in line with the Africa Code Week.

The four-day event which held at Adekunle Primary School, Makoko, Lagos started on Tuesday, October 22 and ended on Friday, October 25, 2019.

The Slum-to-school code week is in line with the Interswitch’s “Switch-A-Future” CSR objective that specializes in harnessing career opportunities amongst secondary students in the Science, Technology Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) paths. A total of 30 students who reside in Makoko drawn from various secondary schools in Lagos, benefitted from the project.

Interswitch aims to drive the study of STEM through students across different age and social categories. This commitment is further reiterated by the company’s social investment in an innovation laboratory at the slum to school. The investment includes building and managing the laboratory since its inception in May 2018.  

Throughout the code week, volunteers from Interswitch came in everyday for two hours after school to give the children hands-on training on coding. On the last day, the children made group presentations of what they had learnt to the Interswitch CSR team. 

Commenting at the event, Interswitch Group Head, Corporate Segment Marketing, Enyioma Anaba, stated that she was impressed with the progress the students had made in such a short while.  She said: “This just goes to show how smart these kids are. 

” In less than one week, we can see these children coding, building websites and writing different computer programmes.  As a company, our CSR focus is on education, innovation and leadership; so, it is very impressive what the right environment and right mindset can do for students”.

Enyioma also encouraged the children to dream big and never be afraid to achieve.

One of the beneficiaries, Hunye Hubert expressed his gratitude to Interswitch, saying that he was now more enlightened about his chosen career path. He said: “We were taught coding and various aspects of computer programming.  Also, the talk we were given has helped me become more conscious of pursuing a career in STEM”.