From Levin to Silicon Valley - YouthTek and JuniorTek

From Levin to Silicon ValleyShowing youth down a technology pathway

Joanne DillonTe Horowhenua Trust

The HorowhenuaPopulation = approx 30,000

About Te TakereThe Purpose

About Te TakereThe Building

About Te TakereThe Culture

What is YouthTek?Technology-focus• School holiday programme• 14 secondary school participants• Free to attend• Run like a professional conference with swag and catered breaks

Why run YouthTek?• Opportunities not usually available in a small town• Funding mostly goes to troubled youth or those in sporting or cultural activities• Supporting education• Showing youth that they are valued by Te Takere• Positive activity for youth• To inspire youth to work hard and aim high

Levin to Silicon Valley?

Levin to Silicon Valley?

But wait, there’s more

The budget$0

Social Sector Trials

Relationships - funders“Thank you so much for getting in touch about YouthTek. I'm part of the GitHub community team; it's lovely to meet you :).

YouthTek sounds like such a valuable initiative and we'd love to help support you! Money first - would $1000 USD help?”

“We're so pleased you got in touch with us about this. We're genuinely delighted to be able to help”

The budget

$14,000

$7,000

YouthTek programmeHTML and CSS

<h2>About YouthTek</h2><p>YouthTek is a school holiday programme for secondary school aged students with an interest in a career in the IT profession. It took place for the first time in April/May 2014.</p><h2>YouthTek14</h2><p>Tutors from Auckland, Wellington and Levin came to Te Takere to teach 14 local youth HTML, CSS and GitHub (web development languages and tools) and Gimp (graphic design).</p>

YouthTek programmeVersion control with GitHub

YouthTek programmeGameFroot

JuniorTek programmeAssembling and programming robots

• BrainBoard robots (Arduino) lent by MindKits• Programming Arduino• Hour of Code using Scratch

JuniorTek programme

YouthTek trainers

JuniorTek trainers

Relationships - trainers“What you guys plan on doing sounds great! I'm sure we'd love to help.” – Gather

“Your program looks really neat - I run Rails Girls here in Wellington and could definitely be interested in running a half-day or full-day workshop” – Rabid Technologies

“I'd love to attend and I'm pretty sure we can make one of those dates work. I'd be happy to look at doing a game creation workshop - either half day or full” – Gamefroot

AND…they all offered to do it for travel costs.

Swag

The icing on the cake

The icing on the cake

The icing on the cake

The JuniorTek14 roadtrip

Key relationships

Other relationships

Relationships with Youth

From Levin to Silicon Valley?

The key to success• Encouragement and support of management• Funding• Hard work• Big goals• Strong relationships with partners• Project and event management skills

Some tips• Be brave and take risks• Aim high• Expect things to go wrong• Have backup plans• Engage with schools early on

What next at Te Takere?YouthTek15 & possibly JuniorTek15

SeniorTek – digital heritage project

Maori, Pacific Islanders, Primary school children, preschoolers, unemployed, community groups…

Horowhenua is our oyster!

Questions?Joanne Dillon aka JD

@JDsTwitticlesjoanned@tetakere.org.nz