Our Beginnings

We started with a one-day workshop.

Our story began when a few students asked us to show them how to use computers left behind. On a visit to Bangladesh in 2018, Shirley was working with a small business that sponsored a school in Dhaka slums. She heard from the principal that a British NGO had shut down and left behind a dozen computers for the school, but the school didn’t have teachers to make use of them. So, a few students self-taught themselves Adobe Illustrator and started teaching others. Impressed with their Illustrate skills, Shirley offered to give them weekly virtual lessons on HTML & CSS for a year, after which they built their own portfolio websites.

The students were eager to learn more, so on her next trip to Bangladesh in 2019, Shirley hosted a one-day workshop for all students on office tools like Word or PowerPoint. However, she noticed that, due to lack of exposure and access, students had minimal computer literacy. Even previous students, though talented at graphic design, struggled with naming files & folders and using search engines. while new students struggled with how to travel between pages on a website and understanding usernames versus real names. And, no one, regardless of their age or level, really knew how to approach an unfamiliar technology program or device.

Returning back to the United States and inspired by how digitally-native children pick up technology, we began to assemble a team of volunteers. Suddenly, one workshop became three months of lessons, tested on a family of 3 young siblings in Dhaka, as schools went into covid-19 shutdown. Then, in early 2020, as we geared up for launching these lessons in actual schools, Alex helped us formalize as a NGO, while education experts, Janet and Chris, transformed our humble lessons into a well-rounded program focused on teaching children how to think, not just how to use specific technology that is available today.

As we continuously test and improve our programs and offerings, our goal is to help local schools and community centers nurture their students for years to come, long after we are gone.