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Coding Workshops For Remote Communities

How This Web Developer Brought Her Love For Code To Remote Communities

Photo of Jessica Duarte

4 min read

Written by Sennah Yee

After making a career change through Juno’s Web Development Immersive Bootcamp, Jessica Duarte found herself inspired to teach others to learn to code.

Before becoming a web developer, Jessica worked in marketing and communications. The 9-5 life wasn’t ideal for her - for one, she found herself working long past 5! She also craved the flexibility of being her own boss, having worked previously as an entrepreneur.

Jessica’s interest in learning to code was sparked while working at a charity in Toronto. “I wanted to learn more about web development in order to better communicate with the developers that we hired at the charity,” she says. “I never in a million years would have thought that I’d end up developing websites myself.”

She took a free coding workshop at Canada Learning Code (then known as Ladies Learning Code), also founded by Juno’s CEO and Founder Heather Payne. Soon enough, Jessica fell in love with code and wanted to learn more!

“After speaking with Heather about Juno’s part-time Web Development course, I knew it was exactly what I needed to explore this new coding passion more,” she says.

Not long after learning the ropes of HTML and CSS, Jessica noticed that Juno was launching its very first full-time Web Development Immersive Bootcamp program, dedicated to those looking to launch new careers as front-end web developers. She knew it was time: she left her job in marketing and communications, and leapt right into tech!

I could not think of a better way to learn how to code than in the hands-on, collaborative, and intensive environment of Juno’s Bootcamp.

Throughout the nine-week Bootcamp, not only did Jessica gain the front-end web development skills she needed to break into tech - she gained a whole community. Jessica and her classmates of Cohort 1 completed Bootcamp in 2014 as Juno’s first-ever Bootcamp graduates.

“I’ve made lifelong friendships, as a result, found several wonderful collaborators to work with,” she says. One of these collaborations is with Juno Bootcamp Grad Hamsa Ganesh, a web developer and designer - despite being time zones apart, together, the two work as Thoughtput, a boutique web design shop.

Student Stories

Jessica Duarte outside, smiling and wearing a furry hat and a winter coat. The backdrop is a lake and forest.

About Jessica’s Journey

  • Before Juno

    Marketing & Communications

  • After Juno

    Director of Adult Programs - Canada Learning Code

  • Currently

    Front-End Web Developer

    Jess, Please!

Advantages of being a freelancer

After graduation, Jessica launched her own freelance web development business - a job she’s kept for over six years. From being your own boss to setting your own hours, there are many benefits to working as a freelance web developer.

My main reason for learning how to code was acquiring the skills to build my own business - and have the flexibility to set my hours and work from wherever I wanted, in my pyjamas.

“I know that in the middle of a pandemic/quarantine, those things don’t sound too special or glamorous - but at the time, they were a real luxury!” she adds. “I felt completely empowered to be running my own business.”

"Juno was our home and launchpad," says Jessica. "It catapulted us into the world of tech but provided a parachute to make sure we landed safely. It’s incredibly comforting to know that if I ask a question to the Juno community, someone will always be there to help."

When she’s running her web development business, Jessica spends her days coding, working with clients and designers, and spending time learning new skills to stay current on the latest tech that impacts her work.

What I love about my work is that it’s so varied. I can never get bored because every website I build is different.

"Learning is such a crucial part of my life," she says. "That is such an amazing quality of working in tech: you can’t sit still and close yourself off to the world. You have to continue learning and trying new tools and languages and moving with the times. It’s exciting!"

Since graduating from Bootcamp, Jessica has since returned to Juno to take part-time courses in design, Full-Stack Development, and Data Foundations. She also takes online courses on different tools and languages to stay current.

“All of the knowledge I gain from these learning experiences, as well as the projects I do for clients, enable me to find better solutions to the challenges my clients need to solve,” she says.

How to become a better web developer

Jessica’s advice for those looking to grow in tech? Get involved in the community! "These community bonds are important and they make you a better developer," she says. She mentions how these bonds can look different for different people - here are some ideas:

  • Participate in meetups
  • Volunteer for organizations that teach code
  • Participate in hackathons
  • Attend conferences
  • Contribute to open-source projects
  • Create or join study groups

Currently, Jessica is part of a JavaScript study group with developers she met during an online course. "We meet every Saturday to talk about the latest going on in the world of JS and WordPress," she says. "Especially if you plan to freelance, which can be quite lonely sometimes, it’s crucial that you build a community around you. The beauty of Juno is that you graduate with a community around you already.”

Jessica also recommends teaching as a way to learn and grow as a developer: "Even if you don’t think you might be “good enough” to teach someone else how to code, don’t let that stop you!" she says.

We are all students, no matter the stage in our learning journey. And we all have something to teach.

Bringing coding and opportunities to remote communities

Jessica’s love for teaching led her to start volunteering as a mentor at Canada Learning Code (CLC), helping to teach adults HTML and CSS.

“Teaching what I knew to others cemented my knowledge in those subjects even more, and it felt great to give back,” she says.

Soon enough, Jessica was leading workshops at CLC as an instructor and began travelling across Canada with CLC’s Code Mobile, teaching kids how to code.

CLC was invited to travel to Lake Helen Reserve to give two special workshops for the local schools. Lake Helen is an hour outside of Thunder Bay in Ontario and is home to the Red Rock Indian Band.

“We were met there by Denise Bouchard, a wonderful leader who was fighting hard to bring technology skills to her community and other northern communities like it,” says Jessica.

The school in Lake Helen where Jessica taught the coding workshop didn’t have any computer classes, as there were no teachers in the area with that skill set at the time. She felt shocked and saddened.

“I thought about how coding had changed my life and given me so many work opportunities,” she says. “I thought about my own Juno Bootcamp classmates and their diverse skill sets. We had a chef, a farmer, a journalist, and a construction worker, to name a few, who became coders in 9 weeks!”

Jessica found herself wondering: "Why couldn’t people in remote communities with limited access to work opportunities also learn how to code and start businesses like mine, or find remote work?"

I imagined a thriving digital sector in Canada’s north, and it could all start right there.

Denise invited Jessica to return to teach a full course in her community. Denise, CLC’s CEO Melissa Sariffodeen, and CLC’s Program Development team began working on a programme that they could deliver up north.

After a year of securing funding, in February 2018, CLC sent Jessica to Long Lake #58 First Nation, where Denise now ran the Welfare Office and worked on Economic Development initiatives. Long Lake #58 is located on Hwy 11 near the town of Longlac, with a population of 450 living on reserve.

The three-month program partnered with Shopify and eBay to give students the tools to set up ecommerce businesses after they learned how to build websites. Jessica taught a class of 20 people between the ages of 20-50.

“Our program was a work-in-progress, adaptive to the particular needs of the students and the community,” says Jessica. “Denise, the Elders, and the students were the ultimate sculptors of their programme, and at CLC we adapted our curriculum and overall experience to meet those needs.”

Jessica expands on about the importance of allowing students to lead this program:

“When we teach anything, but particularly code, it’s tempting to get set in your own teaching style and curriculum and teach what you want to teach,” she says. “In Long Lake #58, I had to be extremely flexible and adapt my curriculum constantly to unexpected circumstances that delayed us, pushed us in new directions, and inspired us to try new things."

Teaching in a flexible environment is challenging but very rewarding because you learn as much as your students do.

The community later secured a grant from the Canadian Women’s Foundation, which allowed them to lengthen the program even more and cover foundational digital skills before diving into coding. These skills included word processing, data manipulation and budgeting, HTML and CSS, video editing, and social media marketing. After learning these skills, the students spent two months applying them to a community project.

“I had the privilege of spending 8 months in Long Lake running that program,” says Jessica. “We used our skills to create a film festival, in collaboration with TIFF. My class designed the brand and merch, purchased supplies, created advertisements, and one of them built the festival website.”

The community even renovated the community centre and upholstered 100 chairs to create a cinema. The festival ran for six months before the pandemic shut-downs in March 2020.

“When the program continues, we will keep building essential digital skills for women to be able to gain work opportunities or become entrepreneurs,” says Jessica.

While Jessica was working as an instructor in the community, she says she learned far more than she could teach.

“I had the amazing privilege of learning from the Elders about their lives, their values and their hopes for the future of their First Nation,” she says. “And I made lifelong friendships with my students who are the most resilient, loving and brave women I know.”

"We cooked together, ate together, learned new hobbies together and had lots of fun as a class," she continues. "They also taught me about the sad inequalities in our education system in Canada and society at large. No matter how hard people might study up north, they simply don’t have the opportunity to study what other Canadians have access to in urban centres."

Jessica mentions the different barriers that impact remote communities, including limited access to transportation and healthcare, higher food prices, and slow or unavailable internet.

“Despite all these inequalities, Indigenous communities pull together for each other and work hard to thrive,” she says.

Looking forward, Jessica hopes to hire one of her students from Long Lake #58 to work in her business as a developer. She's also excited to see what new opportunities come to northern communities as the internet becomes faster and more accessible:

I hope to be there alongside my students helping them wield the power of technology to reach their dreams.


Thinking of learning to code?

Coding is a future-proof skill that can be applied to many roles, both inside and outside of tech. It's also a great way to express yourself, and connect with a community! To get started, check out our free online coding workshops below - absolute beginners welcome:

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