As part of my ongoing initiative to become involved with helping to bring more women into the field of software development, I searched high and low for a group or organization that would enable me to become a mentor. I was starting to become a bit disheartened at the lack of programs in the Toronto area until I found Ladies Learning Code. Ladies Learning Code is a non-profit that runs workshops to teach people, primarily women, beginner skills in technologies such as HTML, CSS and Javascript.

Last week, I had the pleasure of mentoring at an HTML & CSS workshop in Toronto. There was a good mix of students in my group who were there for different reasons. Laura, who works for the non-profit organization YWCA Canada, was hoping to learn enough HTML and CSS to enable her to make basic changes to the company’s websites on her own, rather than having to outsource the work to someone else. Nabeela is a fourth-year Communications student who wanted to build a website to promote her personal brand.

Whatever their reasons for attending, these ladies were willing to move outside their comfort zone and introduce themselves to the somewhat intimidating world of programming. In the end, they all created a pretty cool-looking single page site that demonstrated some of the key concepts of HTML and CSS that they had learned throughout the day.

All in all, mentoring was a very rewarding experience, and I hope to be able to volunteer again at future events.

You can visit the Ladies Learning Code Events page to find out more information about upcoming workshops. There are also camps for girls and for kids if you want your children to learn some basic programming skills.