This month, Hopeworks Web Associate Hien Nguyen began giving back to the community with her new skills by volunteering with Girl Develop It’s Up Program to teach web development to incarcerated women! Hien is a teaching assistant in the program while their Hopeworks supervisor and Web Director, Billimarie Lubiano Robinson, is teaching coding in the UP Program.
UP - Unlocking Potential of Underserved Women - began as a pilot program in December 2017 with funding from Capital One and Barclays. For the past year, GDI’s UP Program team has been going into Baylor Women’s Correctional Institution (BWCI) in New Castle, DE to teach beginner web development classes.
With limited access to relevant professional development, incarcerated women have the most to gain from learning 21st-century skills, especially web development, in order to provide them with more opportunities when they reenter society and the workforce. This innovative program was established to assist incarcerated women to: increase knowledge and awareness of technology, acquire coding and web development skills, enhance self-efficacy; and build confidence, hope, and an openness to try new things.
GDI believes that “teaching incarcerated women is fully aligned with our mission to provide accessible and judgment-free opportunities for diverse women from all backgrounds interested in learning web and software development...Among women prisoners, research shows that the rates of recidivism are high. Our goal is to support the students who return to society by welcoming them into our nearby communities to help them continue their learning and to get involved in a network they wouldn’t otherwise be aware of.”
Hopeworks is so proud the Web team and their desire to help others take control of their futures.
Learn more about this program on this GDI blog post from their first cohort in 2017.
Camden has a solution to help solve a long standing problem – truancy among high school students. Thanks to a new $250,000 program, 50 additional students will train and work right here at Hopeworks! Hopeworks Trainees Aunistee Wright and Dian Pagan were featured in the interview, detailing the soft skills and life experience they have […]
Looking for an inspiring event to kickstart your holiday season? Look no further! Hopeworks is thrilled to invite you to our Annual Pitch Competition happening on November 16, 2024 at Rutgers Camden Campus Center from 10 AM - 3 PM! From 10 AM - 1 PM, you'll watch our brilliant young entrepreneurs pitch their innovative businesses to a panel of judges […]
There are so many huge projects currently happening in our Social Enterprises! Just to highlight a few, our GIS team has been hard at work on two new Data and Quality Assurance projects with Seer Interactive and CCMUA. These projects are pivotal in helping them improve their organizational efficiency through data analysis and maintaining quality of that […]
