Hey there!
I am Abel Lifaefi Mbula. I am living in the East of DRCongo.
In the lines below I'll be sharing with you how Dr. Carol Dweck research on growth mindset helped me start my academy. For those of you who might not know Dweck, notice that she is a world well-known Professor of the psychology of Standford University who spent two decades working on mindset.
The idea
It's all started at the end of the year 2018 when I decided to do something in order to improve the CS level of young people in my home city. It was a bit challenging when I had to write the manifesto of my new idea, but I didn't give up. I was convinced that I will give life to my idea whatever difficulties I was facing.
In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity. -- Albert Einstein
To go ahead I have been inspired by some organizations in the world.
code.org
every student in every school has the opportunity to learn computer science, just like biology, chemistry, or algebra. --code.org
Khan academy
a free, world‑class education for anyone, anywhere: allows everyone from the world to learn anything for free. --Khan Academy
wordpressfoundation.org
ensure free access, in perpetuity, to the software projects we support.
After hard work, I did finish writing the manifesto of my academy and had a little time to design the flyer too.
Communicating about the idea, a challenge
The next challenge was communicating about the academy so that people can get started. That was not easy at all because I came with a new concept; that is self and online learning. And some people even told me that I will fail with my project.
After almost one month, I did get the first person joining the academy. I mentored him getting started with FreeCodeCamp Responsive Web Design certification. I was so happy after working too hard many days refining my project. And now they are so many to join.
The result, so happy to continue
No latter than last week I had around 10 young people joining my academy for WordPress 5 training that is hosted by Openclassrooms.com. As things are going well and well, we are now preparing WordPress and CodePen meetups, and some other floss (free/libre open-source software) activities.
Wrap up
To sum up, I would tell you that in our modern age, having a growth mindset attitude will help you overcome almost every situation in your life. And
don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. […] have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. -- Steve Jobs in his commencement speech at Stanford University in 2005.
Top comments (2)
Absolutely great job Abel! Putting so much effort into helping others grow is always admirable, keep up the great work!!
Thank you so much, Gabriele.
You know, it is not so easy here to start and maintain something, but we are doing our best. We were planing crowdfunding to train people on how to contribute OSS, unfortunately, we did stop due to COVID-19.
I would appreciate any support or advice to refine this project.
Kali Academy site is here.