My Experience Volunteering with Hamoye
Olukolatimi David
My Internship with Hamoye 2020 during the pandemic is one of the best thing that has happened to me in my tech career. As an outstanding intern I was given the opportunity to be a part of the Volunteers/A-team for their upcoming externship.
Reason I Volunteered ?
One of the reasons I chose to volunteer at Hamoye is to be able to help people in programming(Python).
Helping people debug their code is something I really like doing and I often do this on my Whatsapp groups, sometimes on Zindi community and a few other platforms.
So I saw the Hamoye volunteer offer as a position to help me help more people in debugging their code, a responsibility of volunteers that caught my attention then was “ Provide Technical support to externs during machine learning externship”
Also, I believed volunteering with Hamoye was an excellent opportunity to gain more experience and skills which would be relevant in the nearest future.
Experience as a Volunteer
As a volunteer my responsibilities were ensuring no extern were blocked with any of the learning materials on Hamoye. As volunteers during the program we were assigned a group of externs to ensure high effectiveness.
One of favorite moment was when I had a chat with an extern, he was facing an error in python programming, and after series of asking him questions, only to find out he was making errors due to indentation, seems he didn’t like python’s spacing rule ha-ha 😂
I’m thankful to Hamoye because my experience so far has been fruitful, fruitful in the sense that I’ve been able to help more people debug their code, also my communication skills, teamwork and time management skills have improved because of this experience.
Another Highlight for me is the weekly AMA (Ask Me Anything) sessions Hamoye always hosted. This AMA sessions ensured that we volunteers, had adequate knowledge on how to assist the externs.
Best Moments
All the moment spent volunteering with Hamoye was worthwhile.
This is not exactly my “Best” moment but it’s something I’d like to share.
Coming towards the end of the Hamoye Externship, We volunteers, were asked to make a video presentation describing our experience as volunteers.
I panicked because whoa making videos, as much as I like to talk about Python programming, I usually writing it via chats/articles.
I tried making the videos though and it ended up as comedy sessions for me, I realized I could barely look at the camera and it did not just end well.
Why did I just say this though, as a programmer or whatever career you in, communication skills is more than writing good emails and well-drafted articles, you need to learn how to talk to a crowd confidently because the world awaits you.
Advice for future volunteers.
There’s this quote I like “We make a living by what we get and a life by what we give”. If you are in the capacity to help someone please do, this life is only one. Volunteering to programs like Hamoye externship is an opportunity not just to help someone but help people.
Another favorite quote of mine is “Lead with love”. As a volunteer or wherever you find yourself, always learn to lead with love❤️.
If you aren’t currently volunteering and would like to, remember to do so and help others. It is important to be open to new challenges, experiences, and give it your best. To be part of the A-team and its amazing initiatives, sign up on Hamoye’s platform.
