Google has re-coded the idiom – give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime. Moving away from conventional ‘do-good’ actions they have decided to give free coding lessons to 3,000 children. Killing two birds with one stone; give back to the society and get the younger generation interested in technology.
Classes will start in January 2017 and go on for three years. The coding classes are meant for the children aged between eight and fifteen from low-income homes. Sign-ups for the classes will open next month. Participants and their parents will get to tour the Google office.
Google made the announcement at the official opening of their new office in Mapletree Business City II, Singapore on November 2016. From just 24 Googlers in an office in Collyer Quay in 2007, the company’s head count has reached 1,000.
Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, who was at the official opening said, "It's our programme to make Singapore a smart city – lots of ideas go into that. But we hope that Singapore will be able to add something to Google, to help Google thrive, and in the process, Singapore thrives as well."
While explaining this latest move by the company, Caesar Sengupta, VP of product development, said, “We feel like many professions here have a very high level of respectability and we want to make sure technology and the creative industry get to that point where kids, parents, families want their children to grow up to be technologists.”
Google has also made sure that half of the children that enroll are girls, “One thing important to us is to make sure there’s diversity. That’s why at the start we want to make sure that all different communities can participate in this programme, also different genders can participate,” he added.
