Our mission at Actualize is to empower people to live more rewarding lives through a career in technology. We work hard at this day in and day out, from advising applicants to whether Actualize is a good fit for them, to our meticulous curriculum and instruction, to running an apprenticeship designed to provide our students with real world experience, to coaching each graduate on how to land a job. At the same time, we are always looking to answer the following question: How do we push the envelope on achieving our mission? How can we expand our efforts both quantitatively and qualitatively on mentoring people through a career transition in tech that will profoundly impact their lives?

And that's why we're more than thrilled to be able to bring the Actualize experience to Rwanda. We're joining forces with Kepler, an innovative nonprofit university program based in Africa, whose goal is to create a global network of universities that deliver the skills that emerging economies need. Headquartered in Kigali, Rwanda, Kepler has grown to 430 students, and provides significant scholarships to students who would have otherwise been unable to attend a university. As Kepler continues to expand its programming to include many skills that would lead to sustainable jobs, they have turned to Actualize to bring its unique model of coding education to provide software engineering skills to its students.

To keep to Kepler's vision of providing quality education at low cost to its students, we are doing this pro bono. We believe that technology will be a crucial sector to help the Rwandan economy grow, and we are excited to be a part of that.

Our own Mark Richardson, the founding Lead Instructor of Actualize San Francisco - and himself an Actualize grad - is spearheading the project from our end. The prework phase of our course has already begun, and Mark will be moving to Kigali for a few months to teach the course at Kepler. We have already seen how the Kepler students are extremely motivated and talented, and we are confident that many of them will become successful software engineers.

The in-person segment of the course begins in January, and Mark will be blogging here about his experiences as he runs Actualize in Rwanda. We're looking forward to seeing great progress!

Make sure to book a tour here to see if coding is a good fit for you!