Chennai: OutSystems has announced new partnerships and programs that accelerate its long-standing commitment to education and building a diverse generation of developers.
With software needs multiplying for companies across all industries and an increasing shortage of developers, OutSystems is expanding its Developer Education Program to close the skills gap in development and technology. To date, OutSystems has donated software licenses valued at over $10 million – partnering with over 2,300 universities across 40 countries, training over 58,000 students who completed nearly 68,000 online courses that resulted in the creation of more than 9,000 personal environments and close to 6,500 apps built. In addition, OutSystems built a rapidly growing global community of more than 500,000 developers to foster ongoing collaboration and mentorship.
“A core tenet of our mission to empower every organization to innovate through software is a dedicated focus on expanding the developer ecosystem and creating educational opportunities around the world,” said Paulo Rosado, CEO and Founder of OutSystems. “We’re accelerating our education-focused initiatives to support the industry-wide developer shortage, with a specific focus on traditionally underrepresented communities. The world will be a better and more equitable place when diversity and development combine. We all have work to do to create a more diverse, inclusive and vibrant developer community.”
A primary component of the OutSystems push to accelerate its education efforts is a significant focus on communities that have been overlooked and underrepresented in software development and technology. This includes women, Black people, and transgender and gender noncomforming individuals, among others. To aid in creating opportunities for these groups, OutSystems is proud to announce partnerships with Women Who Code (WWCode), Blacks In Technology, and the Australian Computer Society (ACS) to launch programs and sponsorships:
Women Who Code
Women Who Code is a non-profit organization on a mission to inspire women to excel in technology careers. Together with OutSystems, WWCode is offering a life-changing scholarship for women who want to embark on a new career in tech. These coding scholarships are designed for women who are transitioning into tech and software development while providing a supportive community, mentorship and career opportunities. Today, WWCode has given more than $2M to these transforming scholarships. The vision of these efforts is to build a world where women are proportionally represented as technical leaders, executives, founders, VCs, board members, and software engineers.
Blacks in Technology
Blacks In Technology is a global platform for the promotion and inclusion of black women and men in tech. Through this partnership with OutSystems, the Blacks In Technology Foundation is offering new CompTIA scholarships which provide unique opportunities for Black individuals wanting to enter into tech or advance their career around IT. The CompTIA scholarships include certifications such as A+ for infrastructure and hardware, Security Plus for cybersecurity, Network + for Networking and more.
The Australian Computer Society
The Australian Computer Society is Australia’s largest professional body representing the ICT sector. Through this partnership with OutSystems, ACS is working on a scholarship program with a goal of encouraging transgender and nonbinary people to discover more opportunities in the tech sector and gain new skills. This program is designed to allow for flexibility, enabling individuals to pursue areas of study that are most interesting to them in a safe and welcoming environment. The program also aims to encourage collaboration and networking with other tech professionals. The ACS and OutSystems will offer 6 places in the program beginning in February 2022.
“Investing in education is an investment in the future,” said Dennis Schultz, Executive Director of the Blacks In Technology Foundation. “While we’re looking to bring opportunity to the individuals who we work with, programs like this also cause positive ripple effects in underrepresented communities and in the developer community. We all benefit from greater diversity in software development, and we’re excited to empower more students through this partnership with OutSystems.”
Alongside these partnerships, OutSystems is unveiling new development programs:
- The OutSystems Faculty Development Program aims to enable teachers to help their students gain in-demand job skills and greater access to job opportunities. The pilot program kicked off in India and Brazil, where 100 professors went through a three-day online instructor-led program and learned the most relevant concepts of application development in OutSystems, to gain the basic knowledge to introduce a new technology to their students. Now, this new program is expanding into new countries to enable more professors with OutSystems.
- A partnership with Code for All creates an onboarding program and a curriculum for professors and schools in order to make it easier for Universities to get started teaching OutSystems.
- The 14 Days of OutSystems Challenge is a cohort-based learning program that follows the Reactive Web Guided Path bringing developers through 14 days of short daily sessions and weekly check-ins with incentives of certifications and job opportunities. Participants receive a day-to-day learning plan to keep track of their progress and learn together with others in a beginner-friendly environment.
- The Mentorship Pilot Initiative opens up access to one-on-one mentoring for 20 STEM students committed to following the Reactive Web Guided Path. In the future, this program will be open to all junior community members.
“With a degree in Biomedical Engineering, I have always worked as a medical physicist, but my main area of interest was computer vision and image processing,” said Sofia Ikbal. “During the pandemic, I decided it was time to learn more about software development. I joined an OutSystems education course because I could learn at home – combining my personal and work life with my studies. It has definitely been the best thing that has happened to me this entire year, as it gave me the ability to make a career change and follow my passion. I passed the certification and am now an Associate Reactive Developer at Indigo, an OutSystems partner.”
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