Since its founding in 2016, CodeSquad has pursued its mission to train members of Boston's underserved communities for jobs in the fast-growing and lucrative software workforce. We have completed four annual training cohorts, and despite the challenges of Covid-19, we have more applicants than ever (a 20% increase over last year). In this first quarterly newsletter, we are highlighting a CodeSquad graduate and a supporter, who together with an amazing staff represent the core of our program. For a full list of graduates and supporters, check out our website at codesquad.org.

Adolph DuBose

2020 CodeSquad Graduate &
Chief Information Officer, Athenahealth

"There's so much value to be gained by attending CodeSquad and understanding resiliency: having to rely on other people like the Teaching Fellows to get through something difficult, and learning how to be a developer. It's tough to go back to school! [But] my experience with CodeSquad really gave me an edge."

Among both for-profit and non-profit coding bootcamps, CodeSquad provides unparalleled support to our students: weekly proactive instructor check-ins, extensive ad-hoc support for students working on homework or their Personal Project, and monthly Open Office meetings. Our classes are designed to accommodate job and family schedules, meeting at night and on weekends. For our 2022 Cohort, we are launching a mentoring program where each graduate is paired with an experienced professional software developer for ongoing check-ins. And our Job Placement Team continues to build grads' career readiness and partnerships with Boston-area technology companies.

Philanthropic support for CodeSquad has come from foundations, corporations, and individuals. In just over two years of active fundraising, CodeSquad has raised nearly $300,000. CodeSquad has produced transformative results for many of our students, accomplished at a lower per-person cost than similar programs, and there is absolutely no cost to our participants. This is possible only with the support of our donors, like Lou and Rajani and many others. If you would like to make a gift in support of the 2022 Bootcamp, or simply to encourage our work, here's a link to our donation page. Thank you!

Finally, a shout out to our staff, some of whom recently attended a CodeSquad retreat at Crane Beach in Ipswich. It was wonderful to be able to finally get together to celebrate a very successful year, and to make plans for the year to come.

Thanks for reading, and we hope to see you soon at a future CodeSquad event.