Welcome Hakimu to the team!

During the last few weeks, we have been searching for a local person in Zanzibar to grow our team, and to support Salum, our local teacher. Among other things, this means writing posts for the blog on a regular basis, managing the daily business of the school, handling financial and organisational stuff, and much more. The basic idea was to separate the teaching from the organisational work, so Salum can fully concentrate on his job as a lecturer, while the other person in the team will care about everything else.

Out of the many people we personally know in Zanzibar, we decided to invite Hakimu, who is one of the students of the first class of 2010 and also a former student of the Zanzibits school of film and multimedia, to become the newest member of the Zanzicode team. During our stays in Zanzibar in 2008 and 2009, we got to know Hakimu as a sharp-minded, diligent and responsible person and we firmly believe that he is the right man for the job. Fortunately, Hakimu agreed to work together with us, so now we’re happy to welcome him as the newest member of the ever-growing Zanzicode team!

Now over to you, Hakimu, for a short introduction of yourself:

“I was born on the 5th of December in 1985 in a poor family looked after by Mr Kombo by whom I was named as Hakimu Kombo. I started schooling in 1993 in the village of Nungwi, just 42km away from Zanzibar town. In 2008, I finished my secondary education and joined the Zanzibits school for film and multimedia in the following year. Then I had a clear and precise decision to apply for the Zanzicode class of web development and I was lucky to learn, good!

I gained a lot of knowledge from Zanzicode school, and I am really happy and proud about it. It’s a great treasure to develop myself and to help support others. I will be very close and make sure the Zanzicode school is progressing further equipping the Zanzibar youths with latest IT and web development technologies to its best. It’s my responsibilty to prepare something like a report on how the class is going on and to update the Zanzicode blog to let followers know what is happening.

Zanzicode is a unique web programming school in Zanzibar that tries to uplift the web knowledge and web awareness of Zanzibar youths to current standards, something which has enabled me to work very independently in a modern way. A school such as Zanzicode is important because it’s specifically dealing with IT and web development, and it covers all what has to be learned. What I have experienced especially in Zanzibar is that IT degree holders have less ideas about website development because in the college they don’t go deeper, and they are not prepared to design and develop dynamic websites. I press the idea to the donors and big IT companies to help support the Zanzicode project in Zanzibar – we really need to give a ‘go ahead’ to this initiative!”

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Graduates’ voices

After the successful completion of the first Zanzicode class of IT and web development of 2010 on last Sunday, we’d like to give all of the graduates the opportunity to present themselves and tell us a word or two about their experiences during those past months; here we go:

Najim: Hello! My name is Najim Omar Khamis, I live in Zanzibar and I was born in 13th of August in 1985. I was a Zanzicode student, I am now doing my personal web projects. Zanzicode is the school I have been for those months, we started with HTML and CSS to PHP. I’m grateful to acquire this knowledge from Zanzicode. Many thanks to sponsors and partner organisation of Zanzicode. From now on I’m organizing my own projects so that I gain a vast experience.

Saleh: My name is Saleh H. Rashid, I was born in 14th October 1988, I’m happy that I have finished the course successfully. I now know how to design websites. Before Zanzicode, I thought website was like a giant lion that kill people, but now I’m proud that I’m a website experts. For now I’m designing a website for the ministry of sports in Zanzibar, a lot of thanks to zanzicode founders.

Abeid: Hi, my name is Abeid Machano Khamis, I was born on 25th May in 1985. I can’t believe that now I know something special like this, Salum always used to tell me ‘write your own codes, don’t only wait for what I giving you’. I tried and work hard because I was motivated and today I’m here, I have designed different website such as www.forodhanitours.com etc. Thanks, long live Zanzicode.

Fereji: My name is Fereji Nasir Fereji, I was born in 16th september in 1979. In the beginning of zanzicode I was nearly to give up, the reason is that I understood little of the code structures and thinking this is the wastage of time. My fellow urged me not to quit, I managed to attend until  I started to create my own web pages from scratch and finish it, this is good, now I can professionally do websites. Thanks to Salum, and thanks to the Zanzicode owners.

Bure: Bure Juma Khamis is my name, I was  born in Zanzibar in 26th December 1986. Zanzicode was very long journey actually, to have said this, the code language was really difficult to me. Salum was coming close to me to instruct and giving me ideas for the problem I had. I express my pleasures  to have this exceptional knowledge of going live online, too many thanks to Zanzicode and ict4d.at at all.

Hakimu: My name is Hakimu, I was born in 5th of December 1985. To me, Zanzicode school was the only school that I thought I would fullfil my dreams, and this has come true for ever, though I had no any idea about coding before my start to Zanzicode, when we started HTML and CSS, I thought things would be a bit simple, but I came to great darkness when we jumped to Javascript, ok! Because I’m interested and eager to learn these complex kind of things I have been doing great projects now and if I gave up I wouldn’t be much proud as I am. My heart generously goes to Zanzicode initiative and will be forever with it. Thanks, long live Zanzicode.

Ashraff: My name is Ashraff Seif Rashid, I was born in 11th January of 1986. I would like to express my sincere thanks to Salum and Zanzicode fathers, this is great project which we necessarily have to maintain and make sure it helps the Zanzibaris, especially those who have inferior study opportunities. I strongly suggest to my graduating fellows to help the other following us. Thanks.

Ghania: First of all, my name is Ghania M. Abdalla, I was born in Zanzibar, Tanzania in 1st of November 1988. I’m very that I have finished the course successfully, even though I have learned in a very difficult condition. Sometime you need to be motivated to reach success, I have nothing to pay to Zanzicode for what they have taught, God is with them and will pay them for their kindness. Thanks so much.

Graduation of the first class of 2010

Congratulations to the students of the first Zanzicode class of 2010 for their successful completion of the web programming course! On September 5th, a small graduation ceremony was held in the Zanzicode classroom to mark the end of this class’ studies. The event was organized by the eight graduates of the course in collaboration with their lecturer Salum and his assistant Hakim.

Salum started the graduation by congratulating the students and by thanking them for their hard work while learning to program during the last months: “This is really not so easy work, you have to congratulate yourselves for the hard work you have done”, he says. Besides that, he expressed his concerns about some of the students intending to work in different fields instead of IT and website creation / programming. Instead, he recommended working with the knowledge they have struggled for and to go on from where they are now.

The ceremony’s guest of honour was Mbarak Ali, who is a trainer of the Zanzibits school for film and multimedia in Zanzibar. He attended the event following an invitation of the students. Mbarak expressed his thoughts about the importance of learning IT and website creation / programming because of the world we are living in and urged the students to use the knowledge they have got to develop themselves. Also, he recommended to the graduates to update the knowledge they have gained during their time at Zanzicode because every day there are new things released in the IT field.

Every student was happy on this memorable day of receiving their certificates from Zanzicode and from the independed certification exams at www.w3schools.com which they all have passed flawlessly. They presented their gratitudes to Salum and to the Zanzicode management on behalf of Salum, but also their sincere regards to the sponsors of the Zanzicode project who enable this project to be progressing every day.

Many of the students did not expect to reach where they are today, for the beginning of the studies surely have been difficult and some of them were nearly to give up. As they have experienced a lot during their time here at the Zanzicode project, they came up with different ideas about how to improve the organisation of the next class and to enable the following students to be even more successfull with their studies right from the start. Here are some of these ideas:

• There should be more students’ projects. This will bring the students together and help them focus on the their studies. To make this more concrete, it is advisable to do weekly or monthly tests, so the students will know where they are and the teacher will better understand their current level in learning.
• In order to reduce the time spent for teaching HTML in the beginning of the course, it is advisable to create a list of resources about basic web technologies like HTML and CSS. This way, the students of Zanzibits (the school where some of our students come from) and interested people from outside have a way to inform themselves prior to applying for the Zanzicode class.
• To find suitable students for the next class, announcements via the local media corporation of Zanzibar might be advisable. This will help spreading the word about the Zanzicode school and allow for a better selection of students for the next class.

The official part of the event ended by the guest of honour handing the certificates over to the students. After that, there was a dinner for the students as a final celebration of the graduation. Because this is the time of Ramadhan, the dinner was prepared at Salum’s home, where the students and the lecturer celebrated together in the evening.

Regards, Hakim