About Us
DirectEd Development Foundation (DirectEd) is a UK-based charitable organisation on a mission to deliver evidence-based, highly scalable and cost-effective coding programmes and scholarships to under-resourced high-potential students between high school and university in Africa.Our programme prepare students for remote employment by equipping them with the most sought-after digital and soft skills on the market.By pioneering the use of blockchain technology and decentralised identifiers to facilitate scholarships, we enable meaningful transparency, full traceability and accountability at scale.
Our programme
We are creating a impact pipeline with three steps.
Intro Coding Course: an accessible 1-week mobile-phone based and remote Python course.
Full-stack Bootcamp: an intensive 10 week full-stack coding focused on the MERN framework in Javascript.
Graduate Programme: a 6-month long study-internship where teams of students work with tech companies whilst specialising in high-demand languages part-time.
Step-By-Step Process
1. Intro Coding Course and Onboarding
We select partner high schools in Kenya and Ethiopia that have many high-potential under-resourced students. We then provide a free 1-week mobile phone-based remote coding course for all students to take part in. We also help students and schools set up the necessary infrastructure for the stipend disbursement.
2. Scholarship pools
We set up a smart contract scholarship pools. Each school has their own funding pool. This pays for both costs of running the coding courses for free and to enable students from needy backgrounds to receive Access Scholarships covering tutoring expenses, laptop lending and more. We clearly define the milestones needed for each payout from the smart contract.
3. Bootcamp
After a merit-based selection process students enrol in a 12-week bootcamp. The bootcamp is free of charge and covers the most sought-after skills as identified by our employer surveys. Needy students receive milestones-based stipends with funds from the scholarship pool.
4. Graduate Programme
Upon successfully completing our coding bootcamp, we continue to support our scholars through a graduate scholarship.
This has two pathways:
Entry into a longer full-time coding bootcamp
Internship project with our partner companies
5. Employment
When our students are employed as remote software engineers, we ask students to contribute part of their salary back to the same pool that financed their training, creating a self-perpetuating cycle of funding for future scholars.
DirectEd Lions Fundraiser
A Meaningful Donor Experience
The Lion symbolises stength, valour and leadership. Our supporters exhibit these characteristics, but so too do our students.The Lions Collection is our way of giving donors a small token of appreciation for their support.
A Phemelo Warrior
Sahara Mathil, Yoxan Hero
Queen Dalia Teluji
Our Team
Learn more about our team & advisors
Follow our work
Find out more about our organisation, our team, what we do and read monthly project updates on our Notion page.
Contact
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