The power of combining digital skills with soft skills for underserved communities

In her blog series, Alice, our Lead Africa, tells us all things Code Blossom from her point of view: From exciting events happening in our community, to personal stories from her or our students. Stay tuned for this inspiring blog series - you won’t want to miss it!

This week, Alice talks about how powerful the combination of digital skills with soft skills is - especially for underserved communities.

So much has been discussed about this topic such that, in all honesty, I too thought I had exhausted all my sentiments on it till recently. Whilst in one of my analyses, I noted the repeated use of this statement “I want to become confident in my skills”, by Code Blossom female participants. Yet very rarely did I ever hear it coming from the male participants. This led me to want to search deeper on what providing equal opportunities to women truly means in terms of how best it is leveraged. And what things we are not getting right about this well intended quest. All relevant insights as we continue our mission here at Code Blossom to empower women through education.

In my tech career I have worked with a diverse selection of male colleagues, and what I learnt from observing them is how different their approach at being in this tech space was. Lack of confidence was something that hardly stopped them from taking up space, voicing their ideas or doing their work. Such that this was carried through even when expressing and dealing with their knowledge gaps, an attribute I could only ever dream of possessing. Rarely was there any signs of feelings of not belonging and desire to retreat from the spaces, something I knew of and had done so many times in my life. And unfortunately had been modeled to me by women around me in my culture.

So armed with these observations and learnings and also wanting to obtain this skill for myself, I turned to studying various programming trainings I enrolled in. To try and discover if there was a particular lesson I had not paid attention to or resources I had skipped that could help me obtain it. It was a futile endeavor though as I noted that the training offered did not have any distinguishing factors focused on building this particular skill whichI had observed in my fellow male counterparts. This could only mean that it needed to be developed and nurtured in other classrooms, most likely the classroom of life.

I continued on my quest to understand what exactly the missing link was between possessing certain skills and translating them into outcomes or impact. I have come to the realization that though lack of skills can cause women to have fewer opportunities, there is also something deeper within us that holds us back and requires more work to be done on it. So if we can develop this skill in ourselves this can propel us to make meaningful contributions.

But it is not enough to just have skills to do the work; because if we do not know how to use our skills in such a way that offers our highest possible contribution, they won’t be as useful and thus the impact we can achieve becomes less meaningful. To get to such a point we must be confident in our ideas and abilities and we need to recognize our own validity in the spaces we navigate. So that our ideas and contributions can stand for themselves, and gather recognition and influence. This in turn could lead to more innovative resolutions coming from women, something that the world could currently use.

When I look at our students here at Code Blossom and what they have been able to achieve, not just in terms of their software development skills, I am further convinced that introducing digital skills to underserved communities is truly essential. 

You see, breaking into a predominantly male space can feel daunting at first but once you have indeed found your way in, there is a certain level of audacity one gains. And with this audacity you start to dig deeper within yourself and start to trust and see your own potential and contribution. An attribute that I feel most boys, regardless of their endeavors, are encouraged to have by default.

But once you learn to stand up a little taller in spaces where you used to slouch, make yourself small and not want to be heard or seen, you realize that what is within you is something worthy of sharing with the world. 

However, let me be clear that this change in perspective and being does not come automatically with the gaining of digital skills. My experience has taught me that it needs to be nurtured side by side with the development of digital skills. Such that while you are now able to build a website, you also learn to understand that the effort you put into doing the work gives you validity to stand in confidence as a developer and an individual. Because just like the technical skills needs to be developed, so does learning to stand in your power.

Recognizing how digital skills have paved a way for the next generation when mothers show their daughters what is possible. In the case of Charity, (a mum to a little girl) one of our graduates from Malawi, who managed to get a remote position as a software development intern. Even surpassing her own expectations of what she thought was possible, as well as in our other graduates Anam (Pakistan) & Desiree (Philippines) who have dared to take their place in the tech space by being at the forefront of building innovative solutions such as AITut (a learning platform with an embedded AI Agent).

I am convinced that these stories further emphasize how digital skills matter in underserved communities. Because of the empowering force it has in women and girls, however for it to be more impactful; soft skills are required to help nurture confidence and a sense of belonging.There is still so much impact that we are yet to see from this powerful combination as we continue producing more graduates here at Code Blossom. 

That said, we still have our work cut out for us because of what learnings have come about in our continued mission to empower women through marketable skills by teaching software development. I believe though that these great insights can only help us make sure that we deliver tailored training for women in underserved communities, thus empowering them.