Hi there, in this blog post I'll be sharing my experience as a facilitator/volunteer at the TGDI Tech Summer, where I taught over 40 students, and they were able to build fantastic projects at the end of the training.
What is Tech Summer for Teens?
So Tech Summer for Teens, is an annual two weeks training program, where teenagers in under served area in Lagos, get taught basic programming/designing knowledge, and it is hosted by Tooltip Grassroots Developments Initiative (TGDI), a non-profit organization. It's being held in a different town each year targeting rural underserved areas in Lagos, with more than 4 years of helping teenagers for free.
Teens from the age of 13-18 who attend are being taught web developments and also UI/UX design for the course of 2 weeks, and at the end they get to build awesome project that actually solves real life problems.
How did I help?
I volunteered to facilitate the web development class for Cohort 4 (2026) of the training, where I helped teach teenagers, HTML, CSS, TailwindCSS, and Prompt Engineering. I worked with other volunteers to help the students learn, and grow over the course of the two-weeks training.
TGDI Cohort 4 Facilitators/Volunteers group photo
How did the training go?
For the first week, we held intensive classes with the students, covering the basics of web development, we taught them how the internet works, how browsers work, how to build the structure of a website using HTML, and how to style using CSS and TailwindCSS.
And this was the most stressful but fun part of the training, Explaining a concept repeatedly, then seeing students understand it, was one of the best parts of facilitating.
The second week was more focused on making them build their projects, I helped students navigate how to build properly, how to fix bugs (there were a lot), and stood with them throughout their projects. The students from the UI/UX class designs a website while the web development students tries to build the website and bring it to live.
Also during the second week I taught the students the use of AI, and how to use it ethically, and appropriately, also how it can help them build stuff faster.
About 98% of the students came in with zero knowledge of coding, some haven't used a laptop before, and it's absolutely amazing to see these students actually build stuff independently, I was so happy about this, it shows that we had done a very good job.
Overall, these two weeks was absolutely awesome, we learned, built, had fun, played games, and had a wonderful experience together, I can't forget those experiences.
And at the end, 2 students, went home with a free laptop given by TGDI, it was a surprise for the students and an encouragement for them to continue learning and for them to continue to grow.
Image of students when working on their projects during the Cohort 4
Image of students when working on their projects during the Cohort 4
Wrapping things up
Those two weeks, were absolutely amazing, it's a combination or stress, fun, patience, and wonderful memories. And what stood out to me most is that I'm able to help create a spark of innovation within people I might never meet again, and but they will never forget where they got the spark from and I'll always be proud of that.
Some projects built by the students:
- VERDA Climate: https://verda-climate.vercel.app/
- J & P Modelings: https://real-estate-agents-eight.vercel.app/
Thanks for reading.