CHANGE LIVES

Hack The Virus: Your contribution

Donate access to technology to low-income high school students in Colombia

Code For A Change has created a charitable campaign during the COVID-19 outbreak to support the education of low-income high school students in San Jose (Educational Institution), Circasia, Colombia by donating easy access to the Internet and electronic devices. IE San Jose is a public school whose students come from vulnerable families (domestic violence, child neglect, unemployment, among others).

The professional future of these students is at risk, and we are here to offer our support. In this institution, there are 1000 students, 267 students of which without Internet access, 143 without electronic devices at home, and others have to share a laptop with their multiple family members. We all know how hard it can be to pursue a potential higher education without having this “freedom”. All these students are facing challenges to complete their studies due to the COVID-19 outbreak, as they must stay at home. Code for A Change launches this international campaign to give them easy access to technologies for their education.

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You can help them to continue their studies online from home by donating or sharing this information.

FAQs

Why a campaign to bring online access to IE San Jose students?

Code For A Change, as an organisation created by Mariana Quiroga Londoño and Paula Balcells, decided to launch a support campaign during the COVID-19 outbreak, aimed at supporting Colombian students. We identified that a lack of technological access would affect the completion of their semester, or would put them at risk for having to leave home to connect to online courses. In this first edition, we decided to select IE San Jose, as Mariana is Colombian, and the story of her family started in Circasia, Colombia. Nevertheless, we aim to expand our help to more students and institutions.

How were beneficiary students selected?

In Colombia, citizens are classified based on their household income by levels or strata, they call them “Estratos”. There are 6 levels as follows:

Therefore, in our first edition, we have selected a total of 10 beneficiary students (14-16 years old) from household level 1 and 2. Consequently, their lack of technological access is affecting their educational progress at the moment. Importantly, these students have shown interest and curiosity for pursuing the right education, especially STEM fields (science, technology, engineering, math).

This data has been validated by Martha Liliana (Biology teacher at IE San Jose).

How is the goal of bringing technological access to students achieved?

It is imperative to clarify that Code For A Change has not signed any agreement with the public institution IE San Jose, this is a private scholarship we have organised and we have defined our criteria to select the students (see the previous section).

Each donation will be stored in Code For A Change’s Paypal account and, subsequently, split between the 10 selected students (see the previous section).

Code For A Change WON’T be economically benefited from this campaign.

If I donate, can I get the list of names of students I am helping?

The students are underage (14-16 years old), and we need to protect their identity. If you do not feel comfortable with this, please send us an email expressing your concerns, we will be very happy to provide you with more details.

We hope you understand that this private help is only possible thanks to your altruistic donations, so Code For A Change cannot promise that the 10 students will get full technological access.