A community service project organised by Singapore Management University, School of Information Systems, Project HeartCode serves to provide the less privileged youths the opportunity to explore their interest in IT through solving real problems with IT innovations.
To maintain a long-term sustainable framework to equip underprivileged youths with basic programming skills through knowledge transfer and hence igniting their passion in information technology and closing the opportunity gap that faces the underprivileged community in Singapore.
To engage youths through interactive hands-on workshops and problem-based learning, where youths will be exposed to real social problems and be challenged to ideate and prototype their innovative IT solutions.
Started by two alumni of the Singapore Management University (SMU) School of Information Systems (SIS), Project HeartCode was an idea born from identifying the need to provide equal opportunity for individuals to learn about technology and programming, especially among underprivileged youths in Singapore. Coming into its third year running now, Project HeartCode recognises the ever increasing difficulties faced by families from underprivileged backgrounds, especially when raising their children. Although basic education is relatively accessible in Singapore, students from lower income backgrounds might have less exposure to various extra-curricular education as compared to their more fortunate counterparts.
This creates a gap between students of different family backgrounds, especially in terms of certain technical skills where early exposure for students can result in a large advantage in their later years. Other than merely a disadvantage, such a lack of exposure might also result in students being deprived of potential career choices as they may not know the existence of some technical fields. Such technical skills include computer literacy and programming. As SMU undergraduates in the School of Information Systems, we have direct access to such skills and aim to use this knowledge to aid the lack of exposure for students from underprivileged backgrounds. We achieve this through a 5-day workshop which introduces basic programming knowledge to the students, with huge emphasis on helping them realise the impact that programming can create.
This is done by assigning and mentoring them on mini projects which prompts them to create technology-based solutions which brings about positive impact. Over the years, we are heartened to see many innovative projects being created by our mentees past and present. With just a introduction to web development and Internet of Things (IoT), they were able to ideate and create prototypes of many innovative, impactful solutions to combat various social challenges which they have observed locally. Check out the 'Projects' page to see all the past projects!