Industry High tech startups Area served United Kingdom Founder Alice Bentinck | Headquarters London, England Key people Amali de Alwis, CEO Founded 2012 | |
Type Not for Profit Social Enterprise Founders Alice Bentinck, Matthew Clifford | ||
Code First: Girls is a Not for Profit Social Enterprise that works exclusively with women in Britain to develop coding skills.
Contents
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. It also supports businesses to train staff and develop talent management policies.
As of June 2016, Code First: Girls is reported to have provided in excess of £1.5 million worth of free coding courses to more than 1,500 women since 2013.
Programs
According to the Code First: Girls website, the organisation offers "simple web and computer programming". The course aims are to provide practical skills that can be applied to a participants' studies, their workplace, or if they are beginning their own tech startup. Delivery of the courses comprises in-person lectures and tutorials.
Code First: Girls
Code First: Girls provide free part-time coding courses called University Chapters, at UK and Ireland campuses, which is exclusively for female university students.
General courses in London are also delivered 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.
Code First: Professionals
Code First: Professionals women's courses are fee paying. These courses teach participants to make a website, how to improve its design and how to publish it online.
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".
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) . EF supports the development of Code First: Girls.
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.
Amali de Alwis was announced as first Chief Executive Officer of the organisation on Wednesday 8 April 2015, taking over from Bentinck and Clifford .
In 2016 Code First: Girls was nominated for a National Diversity Award.