Codeup Helps Rails Girls Help Women Learn to Code in San Antonio

This moment in history is exploding with stories about women breaking new ground in technology, summits of female tech leaders, and invitations for women to learn new technology skills so that IT teams and development shops can benefit from gender parity. Organizations like Rails Girls are fueling the fire by providing women and girls with the tools and community they need to learn, and to be confident with new coding skills. This week, Rails Girls is putting on a free, two-day workshop in San Antonio where they will teach women how to program using Ruby on Rails.At Codeup, we’re all about community, collaboration, and partnership. It's our lifeblood to be an integrated force in San Antonio’s landscape of blooming, new tech talent. We also work to fuel the dreams, goals and future potential of women in tech careers. So when we heard about the upcoming Rails Girls workshop, we only had one question, which we managed to sandwich between our fangirl squeals: Can we partner with you?!They said yes, we cried tears of joy, and our shared mission has us both super invested in the success of the upcoming workshop. How are we investing? Well, our time, treasure, and talent are the best things we can give! Two of our esteemed team members, an instructor and one of our curriculum developers, as well as our co-founder and his team of developers, will be participating as on-site mentors to help facilitate the learning process. As educators and friends, these folks embody who we are and what we do at Codeup. Here’s their take on the weekend’s programming festivities:Ryan Orsinger, our full-stack bootcamp instructor, says, "Rails Girls makes a global impact for gender parity in the programming community. Codeup makes an impact for gender parity in the San Antonio programming community." It's a perfect match of shared goals!Ryan goes on to say that his “decision to volunteer as a coach for Rails Girls is simple. Programming is the new literacy, and everyone should have exposure and experience in this field. I'm thrilled that San Antonio will be hosting its first (of many) Rails Girls workshops." Agreed, Ryan.Now, meet Tarek Hafez, a curriculum developer here at Codeup:Tarek is passionate about learning and growing from the challenges he faces, and as a volunteer at Rails Girls he hopes to share his passion and knowledge with others. “I can help to motivate and inspire those I seek to mentor, as well as educate,” said Tarek, “I could not ask for a better opportunity.”Another awesome supporter of Rails Girls from our community is Jason Straughan, a Codeup cofounder, our CTO, and founder and head guy in charge of everything at a Grok Interactive, a web application development company. He’s sending his developers to also mentor the event.“Louis, Anton, and Joseph and I are going to be coaches for Rails Girls...I’m pumped,” said Josh Freeman, senior software developer and former instructor for Codeup teen summer coding camps. Not only that, Joseph is a also Codeup-grad-turned-Grok-developer! According to Josh, the developers at Grok are never done learning and studying, an ideal that “meshes well with Rails Girls, where you’re trying to train and introduce new people to programming. That’s why we jumped at the opportunity.” Although the Rails Girls workshop will only be in San Antonio for a weekend, the organization has already planted its compelling, and contagious, vision in our city.In our coding bootcamps people come in with dreams, hopes, fears, and wonder. Can I do this? Can I really learn a new set of skills in four months, become a valuable developer, and end up with a completely new job, new life, and new trajectory? And women especially bring a different set of sensitivity and caution. We meet their wise concerns with a great confidence-building foundation of real skills to maximize their value in the tech landscape. Can I really do this? Is there room for me in the 73% tech industry? Can I make a difference?Great questions. And we answer them with a resounding yes because we see it happen again, and again, and again.*You may still be able to snag a spot at this weekend’s workshop! Check with railsgirlssa@gmail.com for details.