This past Fall, Favour (a High School Senior from Pflugerville, TX) joined Code2College and was admitted in Code2College Turbo, one of our most accelerated classes. Over the course of the program wave, whether through her insightful questions or tendency to assist her fellow Code2College classmates, she consistently stood out as an exemplary student. Favour also attended a number of Code2College workshops that helped refine her professional skills as well as STEM case competitions that exposed to her a range of industries including Test Engineering, Software Development and more.
And as impressive as that might be – there was a significant hurdle that Favour first had to clear. It’s one that many of our students face and that has become a much more apparent challenge for students given the current state of the world. Favour’s hurdle was digital access.
But this story isn’t about what Favour didn’t have. It’s about what she did have. She had the drive to succeed and the desire to learn. She also had the support of one of our founding and most active corporate partners: Meta. In 2021, Meta provided a generous donation of lightly used Macbook Pros to Code2College for redistribution to Code2College students in need.
Thanks to Meta, Favour was able to participate in Code2College programming this past Fall. In fact, Favour has done so much more since she received that laptop donation from Meta. After applying and being admitted to the Code2College Elite Internship Program in December, she interviewed with Atlassian this month for a Code2College Software Engineering Summer Internship role.
And guess what? Favour received the offer and will be joining Atlassian in Summer 2022!
For years, Meta has delivered unwavering support of all of our students, and particularly supportive of our Black student population through the Black@Facebook Employee Resource Group (ERG). Since 2016, when Jeanine Henry, Director of New Products (Products & Service Operations) at Meta, led the charge to plan and execute the first-ever Code2College event to be hosted by a corporate partner, Meta has been at the forefront of ensuring that our students have the opportunity to see representation in the STEM field and at a global Tech powerhouse.
From hosting annual Black History Month events to prepare students like Favour for life-changing high school technical internship interviews to participating in countless Code2College Mass Remote Events (MREs) – monthly, asynchronous college access support events – Black@Facebook members and Meta employees at large have lifted up our students in so many ways.
And if the investment of time and talent weren’t enough, Meta became an Investor-level funder of Code2College Vision 2024 – our initiative to support, develop and place 200 Black and Latina girls into STEM roles by the year 202 – in 2020 and continues to invest deeply in this groundbreaking work.
We at Code2College are eternally grateful for the work that Meta supports, as well as all of the realized impact that has been driven by their investment in our mission, work and students.