IT Future Mentors is a project aiming at establishing cooperation between IT companies and schools to encourage children to study tech and to explain the opportunities offered in this field. Thanks to all the faculty mentors from three tech companies, hundreds of Lviv’s students enrolled in this semester learned about teamwork building, creative thinking, the basics of software testing, SMM, and digital marketing.
The IT Future Mentors project was initiated by the Lviv City Council and implemented by Lviv IT Cluster by involving its employees from member companies. During September-December 2021, fifteen mentors from Avenga, DataArt and Inoxoft introduced the students to the tech industry and shared their own experiences to encourage students to become top-notch, tech savvy, and easily adaptable to every technology they are assigned to.
The collaboration between schools and mentors maximized the opportunities and needs of both parties. The majority of computer science studies took place either as core subjects or electives.
During this period, IT Future Mentors has lured employees from different areas, including QA engineers, recruiters, developers, business analysts, and designers. Inoxoft’s XSLT Software Developer Ksenia Fesik is working with students from Lyceum 93.
“I’ve been studying issues related to tech education for about five years. During this time I’ve signed up to volunteer with various projects from math competitions, to mentoring sessions with Minecraft children’s teams, to annual participation in Hour of Code. So when my colleagues offered to volunteer in a project by Lviv IT Cluster I gladly accepted. This is an incredibly important and necessary initiative to help teenagers with vocational training programs and inform local schoolchildren about educational opportunities in Ukraine”, says Ksenia Fesik.
Three mentors from DataArt worked with Nadiya Lyceum. They organized ten classes for the 9th-grade students to share the ins and outs of working in the tech industry, the main requirements for the IT professionals, and stages of the project life cycle. In addition, mentors conducted workshops to develop creative thinking, taught students how to give and get effective feedback, improve teamwork skills, and discussed social media etiquette.
“This wasn’t the first year we had participated in IT Future project. In pre-lockdown times, DataArt hosted Lviv’s schoolchildren at our office, conducted tours, and shared our insights about working in the tech field. This year we joined an online version of the project, together with our computer science teacher Anna Pavlik, we’re running a series of training sessions on topics that would be interesting to all students, without exception, motivating them to self-develop. We tried to make lessons more practical, so the students could see which skills they need to improve or more,” says Olga Denisenko, PR Coordination Lead, DataArt Lviv.
Mentors from Avenga company worked with school №45. They taught kids software testing, basics of digital marketing, SMM, and project management. Avenga also started mentoring in school №50. The initiator was an employee who graduated from this institution.
“This is a wonderful project that brings not only educational and practical value for students but also increases social responsibility of IT professionals. I am so glad that many employees of our company have joined this project to show that development and the future of the tech community is really important “, says Lilia Kolivoshko, Branding Lead at Avenga Ukraine.
Those companies that partnered with schools during the semester are planning to intensify and continue their cooperation in 2022. IT Future Mentors project intends to expand the circle of IT companies that will join mentorship in Lviv educational institutions. Therefore we encourage employees to become part of IT Future Mentors and improve the tech education from school years.
If you are interested in joining the IT Future Mentors project, please write to our project manager Oksana Korin — oksana.korin@itcluster.lviv.ua
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