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Code First Girls

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Code First Girls
Company typeNot for Profit Social Enterprise
IndustryHigh tech startups
Founded2012
FoundersAlice Bentinck, Matthew Clifford
Headquarters
London
,
England
Area served
United Kingdom
Key people
Anna Brailsford, CEO
Websitewww.codefirstgirls.org.uk

Code First: Girls is a Not for Profit Social Enterprise that trains women in IT skills and helps companies to develop more female‑friendly recruitment policies.[1]

The organisation promotes gender diversity and female participation in the technology sector by offering free and paid training and courses for students and professional women.[2] It also supports businesses to train staff and develop talent management policies.[3]

As of 2020, Code First: Girls is reported to have provided in excess of £10 million worth of free coding courses to more than 17,000 women since 2013. [4]

In 2017, Code First: Girls announced the launch of the "Code First: Girls 20:20 campaign" with the aim to "train 20,000 women to code for free by the end of 2020". [5] As of 2018, Code First: Girls have announced "2020 campaign partnerships" with the following companies: Bank of America Merrill Lynch; Goldman Sachs; KKR; Trainline; and OVH. [6] The organisation announced Baroness Lane-Fox and Dame Stephanie Shirley as supporting the campaign as ambassadors. [7]

Programs

According to the Code First: Girls website, the organisation offers free and paid for in-person coding courses for women, as well as for companies across the UK and Ireland [8]

Free Community Courses

Code First: Girls runs free part-time coding courses for female/non binary identifying young individuals across the UK and Ireland.

Individual joining for courses at a university are required to be a student at the host university. General coding courses are also delivered at corporate locations and are open to women with the following eligibility: Aged between 18-23; or Aged 18+ and currently studying; or Aged 18+ and completed their studies in the past 2 years. [9]

Code First: Professionals

Code First: Professionals women's courses are fee paying. These courses are targeted at female professionals and teach participants to make a website from scratch. [10]

History

Code First: Girls began in late 2012 as "a nine-week, free, part-time course to get female graduates from all walks of life not only interested in coding, but also better equipped to contribute to technical discussions in high-tech businesses".[11]

Founded by Alice Bentinck and Matthew Clifford, Code First: Girls was created they recognised a lack of female applications for their pre-seed investment programme Entrepreneur First (EF) .[12][13][14] EF supports the development of Code First: Girls.[15]

Bentinck claims that of the first cohort to complete Code First: Girls training, more than half of the women participants now self-identify as "technical" or working in software-development roles.[16]

Amali de Alwis was announced as first Chief Executive Officer of the organisation on Wednesday 8 April 2015, taking over from Bentinck and Clifford. [17] In November 2018, Amali was named to the Financial Times' list of the 'Top 100 minority ethnic leaders in technology.'[18]

Code First: Girls was included in the UK Government's "UK Digital Strategy" policy paper 2017 as a "programmes doing valuable and innovative work to help more women into tech". [19]

Awards

In 2016 Code First: Girls was nominated for a National Diversity Award.[20][21]

In 2017 Code First: Girls won "e-Skills Initiative of the Year" at the Information Age "Women in IT awards". [22]

References

  1. ^ Thomas, Kim (9 July 2018). "Women in tech: the IT firms tackling the gender imbalance". The Guardian. Retrieved 20 November 2018.
  2. ^ "Code First: Girls". Code First: Girls. Retrieved 2016-10-11.
  3. ^ McDonald, Clare (29 June 2016). "To create more female engineers, we need to create more strong female role models". ComputerWeekly.com. Retrieved 11 October 2016.
  4. ^ "Learn to code with these classroom-based UK coding courses". techworld.com. 23 January 2020. Retrieved 25 February 2020.
  5. ^ "Code First: Girls launches campaign to teach 20,000 young women to code for free by end of 2020, secures funding from KKR, OVH and others and opens crowdfund campaign". Code First: Girls. Retrieved 20 November 2018.
  6. ^ McDonald, Clare (3 April 2018). "How Code First: Girls uses partnerships to teach girls to code". computerweekly.com. Retrieved 20 November 2018.
  7. ^ Lee, Alex (7 March 2018). "Code First Girls wants to teach 20,000 women to code by 2020 - and it could give the UK an edge after Brexit". alphr.com. Retrieved 20 November 2018.
  8. ^ "Courses we offer". Code First: Girls. Retrieved 20 November 2018.
  9. ^ "Free Community Courses". Code First: Girls. Retrieved 20 November 2018.
  10. ^ "Code First: Professionals Women". Code First: Girls. Retrieved 20 November 2018.
  11. ^ "Girls-only coding class looks to increase female tech startup presence1".
  12. ^ "Inspirational Woman: Alice Bentinck | Co-Founder of Entrepreneur First and Code First: Girls". 2016-04-29. Retrieved 2016-10-11.
  13. ^ "ELLE's Tech Titans: Alice Bentinck". ELLE UK. 2016-09-19. Retrieved 2016-10-11.
  14. ^ "Lessons from running a start-up accelerator". Retrieved 2016-10-11.
  15. ^ "London's startup scene is getting more sophisticated". The Economist. 2016-03-10. ISSN 0013-0613. Retrieved 2016-10-11.
  16. ^ "Lessons from running a start-up accelerator". Retrieved 2016-10-11.
  17. ^ "Amali de Alwis joins Code First: Girls as CEO". Code First: Girls. Retrieved 2016-10-11.
  18. ^ "The UK's top 100 black and minority ethnic leaders in technology". Financial Times. Retrieved 2018-11-26.
  19. ^ "2. Digital skills and inclusion - giving everyone access to the digital skills they need". gov.uk. 1 March 2017. Retrieved 20 November 2018.
  20. ^ "I have just voted for Code First: Girls for Community Organisation at The National Diversity Awards, click here to vote for this person". nominate.nationaldiversityawards.co.uk. Retrieved 2016-10-11.
  21. ^ "Register Your Interest". Code First: Girls. Retrieved 2016-10-11.
  22. ^ "Women in IT Awards 2017: winners revealed". information-age.com. 26 January 2017. Retrieved 20 November 2018.
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