Dev Academy partners with Vodafone Foundation to Accelerate Change

Dev Academy believes in empowering people with tech knowledge to improve the lives of all New Zealanders. This mission has led us to leverage a number of important partnerships to amplify our impact and accelerate our mission for social change.

The Vodafone New Zealand Foundation is investing 10 years and $20 million to transform the lives of 210,000 young New Zealanders. They want to ensure all young people have access to the resources and opportunities they need to become great adults. Dev Academy is partnering with Vodafone Foundation on their Change Accelerator to reach our shared goals.

The Vodafone Change Accelerator uses Vodafone’s resources to boost a number of community projects that will create better outcomes for young people. These include an alert system for young people who want to be rescued in uncomfortable situations, and a rewards programme to support healthy families in the Ngāti Porou rohe.

On October 2, Dev Academy is sending 6 graduates to Christchurch for two weeks to build out the technical side of these projects.

Graduates of Dev Academy’s web development course leave the programme with the tools to become Junior Web Developers, or launch their own digital businesses. These are real world skills that businesses want, which can make a huge difference to organisations. Dev Academy’s graduates will be using their skills to massively amplify the reach and impact of the community projects in the Change Accelerator.

One graduate, Pauline, notes, “I became very interested in creating the Alert App because about 75% of domestic violence in NZ goes unreported and about half of all homicides in NZ are committed by an offender who was identified as a family member. I want to be a part of the solution that breaks that cycle but most of all, I want victims of domestic violence to be comfortable with coming forward by implementing this app. “

Dev Academy’s curriculum teaches students the personal as well as technical skills to succeed in professional programming environments. As part of this, Dev Academy offers Selfware and Tech for Non-Tech classes to develop well rounded graduates that can hit the ground running in software teams and prove useful from day 1 on the job.

Dev Academy is offering the Selfware and Tech for Non-Tech courses to the Vodafone Change Accelerator teams to help them upskill and develop their personal and technical proficiency. This will enable project groups to tackle the tech side of their initiatives with technological confidence, communication skills and highly developed teamwork.

The Vodafone Foundation are flying Dev Academy teachers Tony and Sarrah down to Christchurch to run these sessions for the Change Accelerator teams.

Their 10 year strategy involves using innovation, collectivity and disruptive strategies to support young people. Their key outcome areas are youth justice, health and disability, care and protection, long term beneficiaries, rangatahi Māori and meaningful learning.

Dev Academy is excited to see where this partnership will lead, and looks forward to using tech to help improve the possibilities of 210,000 young people in Aotearoa.

ENDS

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