Geekulcha is extending its VacWork programme into a 5th province - KwaZulu-Natal.
The KZN Youth ICT and Business VacWork Programme will be hosted in Howick from 9 to 13 December, according to Geekulcha COO Tiyani Nghonyama.
Geekulcha VacWork (#gkVacWork) is an annual vacation skills development programme that brings together about 50 high school pupils to learn about IT, with a specific focus on mobile app development, Web development, and entrepreneurship skills. It aims to encourage youth to venture into the ICT field to increase work opportunities within the industry.
The first Geekulcha VacWork (#gkVacWork) event in KZN will focus on digital solutions for tourism and agriculture in the uMngeni Local Municipality.
“Young people will spend the holidays with the geeks from Geekulcha and students from the Durban University of Technology and learn how to code, work on real-life projects and build their own tech startups,” says Nghonyama.
Embracing open source
For the first since the introduction of VacWork, the programme will feature GitHub, the world’s largest open source software development platform.
Nghonyama, who was recently named the IT Personality of the Year 2019 by the Institute of IT Professionals SA, says Geekulcha wants young minds to grow with the right code values and to promote 'a digital sharing state – Ubuntu’.
At the end of the programme, the young coders will have their own online portfolio through the programmer’s portal. “We want them to have something to put on their CVs as having had some working experience,'' adds Nghonyama.
As always, Geekulcha is promoting the concept of developing software that it `secure by design’. When presenting their solution, the coding teams will have to explain how they integrated security in the software development lifecycle and how they plan to address possible vulnerabilities.
Sponsored by Vodacom NXT LVL, #gkVacWork is a collaborative programme with the uMngeni Local Municipality, the South African National Youth Development Agency (NYDA), Sibambisene, HERE Technologies, SqwidNet, RS Components, and ITWeb.
The KZN Youth ICT and Business VacWork Programme
●Date: 9 - 13 December 2019
●Venue: Howick West Community Hall
●Info: future.geekulcha.com/kzn
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