Jamaica has develop into the 89th nation to launch ‘iamtheCODE’, a world charity endorsed by the United Nations (UN).
Based by Senegalese-born French social entrepreneur, Girl Mariéme Jamme, iamtheCODE is dedicated to advancing schooling in Science, Expertise, Engineering, Arts, Arithmetic, and Design (STEAMD).
In Jamaica, the programme will probably be spearheaded by iamtheCODE Caribbean (IATCC) co-founders, Nadeen Matthews Blair and Mariame McIntosh Robinson, each distinguished alumni of the World Financial Discussion board’s Younger International Chief (YGL) Programme.
Commencing January 2026, IATCC, with help from the Digicel Basis, will launch a 12-week blended digital coding and management improvement programme.
This free coaching programme goals to equip underserved youth, ages 18 to 30, with marketable digital abilities and facilitate pathways to employment.
In her deal with in the course of the latest IATCC press launch held on the S Lodge in Kingston, Minister of Training, Expertise, Youth and Info, Senator Dr. the Hon. Dana Morris Dixon, counseled the initiative, noting its shut alignment with the Ministry’s strategic goals.
“We’re constructing out golf equipment the place our kids can be taught to code, as a result of we perceive that each little one in Jamaica wants to have the ability to code,” she stated.
Senator Morris Dixon underscored the vital function of digital literacy in equipping college students for the calls for of the longer term.
“We all know that schooling is the important thing to unlocking alternative. However in in the present day’s world, it’s the brand new digital abilities that readily open the doorways to jobs, innovation and international competitiveness. Expertise like coding open the doorways of alternative,” she stated.
For her half, Mrs. Matthews Blair shared that upon studying of the impactful work being led globally by Girl Mariéme Jamme, as a YGL alum, she and Mrs. Robinson McIntosh had been impressed to carry the initiative to Jamaica.
“Given the place we’re in the present day, when it comes to the significance of digital and AI (synthetic intelligence) abilities and the way it’s reworking our world, we thought it crucial to affix in that motion to make it possible for our younger individuals had been adequately ready,” she stated.
Mrs. Matthews Blair famous that the platform affords over 65,000 programs, with the one stipulations being a tool and a real need to be taught.
“Our imaginative and prescient is to get to a spot the place we aren’t solely upskilling our younger individuals, however making a nation of individuals who’re expert, high-earning, revolutionary and producing with robust character, they usually’re altering our companies, their lives, our communities, our nation and our world,” she stated.
Girl Mariéme Jamme, who was trafficked from Senegal to France as a baby, based iamtheCODE to mobilise governments, the personal sector, philanthropic foundations, traders, and civil society in help of future applied sciences that advance sustainable improvement for girls and ladies in marginalised communities.
“It’s very pressing that we practice our individuals. We have to make it possible for we’re a part of the worldwide dialog in re-skilling individuals. Not all people will find yourself in Cambridge [University], in Harvard [University], in Oxford [University]. So we have to discover various schooling so younger girls and ladies won’t find yourself like me, in a village in Senegal, being trafficked and being sexually abused,” she stated in the course of the launch.
Thus far, iamtheCODE has reached over 550,000 younger girls and ladies, and goals to coach a million feminine coders globally by 2030.
