Asha Makana grew up in a family of 14 siblings. Being among the youngest, she would sometimes feel disconnected and quite lonely. However, she found her joy at school. One of the main reasons for this is the close friendship she formed with her teacher, Paul Mbati.
According to Asha, he was a kind, generous man who took an interest in her, and they forged a lovely teacher-pupil relationship. Any time he would buy himself a new pen, he would also get her one. When Asha’s mother cooked a lovely meal at home, she would carry some to share with her teacher.
Theirs was a good friendship, but fate is a cruel mistress and Teacher Paul died.
It was a difficult loss for Asha, and she had a hard time imagining life without her friend, but her father helped her process her grief. While the death of Teacher Paul had affected her, a seed had been sown. Asha vowed to help and care for children in need in the same way her teacher had done.
While at school, she performed well in science. Asha had a massive interest in coding and dreamed of being a mobile app developer. She joined Karatina University in 2012 for a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science, and in her second year, she coded the entire Primary One Math book. She did her Masters at the University of Nairobi in Computational Intelligence in 2018.
After graduating, she got into the data space at Safaricom and is currently the Tech Lead for the Data Analytics team.
While at Safaricom, she went to Thika School for the Blind as part of a CSR project to donate some braille equipment and got the chance to connect with some of the children there.
She felt the need to do something more for the kids and then decided to teach coding. She purchased a Kano kit (a portable computer that has various accessories for teaching stem, computing, and robotics to children) from Amazon and started teaching coding classes at Makimei Children’s Home in Gitaru. Over time and with the support of institutions like the Nairobi Global Shapers Community, an initiative of the World Economic Forum, she’s managed to buy more kits and equipment and onboard more schools to her mentoring gig.
Besides Makimei Children’s Home, she also works with Children’s Garden Home in Kawangware, Ushirika Girls Centre in Kibera, Samburu Girls Foundation in Samburu, and Manda Maweni School in Lamu.
The courses she teaches include an Introduction to coding, Block coding, Python programming, and Java programming, among others.
As more people embrace coding, she advises that consistency is key, especially for kids.
“Many more people now want their children to know how to code, but it is important to look through the curriculum, see the goals and stick with the course. Your child is not going to learn how to code in just a month or two, it takes time,” she said.
Asha plans to roll out her coding curriculum soon: “I’m working on a curriculum that I can share with the public. I plan to enroll more students to the program and have a central class setup where kids can code and practise different technologies.”
Watch the video below to learn more about Asha’s mentoring journey.
