Why Young People Inspire Us
Sometimes, just sometimes, social media throws an amazing bone our way. For those of you who haven’t read the internship application posted by Kat Borlongan, co-founder of Five by Five innovation consultants, on her Facebook page, prepare to have your hearts melted.
The letter, which went viral at the back end of June, is written by a 10-year-old French girl. In it, she quite plainly states that “the streets of Paris are sad”, and that she “want[s] to build a robot that will make them happy again.” She’s already learned the basics of coding, but she has “trouble” getting her robots to work properly.
This is all for the chance to be enrolled on Five by Five’s Summer Innovation Fellowship, a 2-week mentor programme that puts untold resources into the hands of young inventors and techies.
Needless to say, Borlongan accepted Eva’s application; the response she gave made our bottom lips a tad wobbly. Since The Code Guy is all about the next wave of computer science changing the world for the better, we couldn’t help but think what we’d do in Kat’s position, and how much we’d love to see more Evas in our neck of the woods.
Small voices are the loudest
Going back to Borlongan’s post, what struck us most is this little girl’s go-for-broke attitude. The Innovation Fellows, apparently, didn’t stipulate what age you have to be to apply for their internship. “There was nothing on the website,” states the reply, “that said the programme was open to 10 year-olds but – as you must have noticed – nothing that said it was not.”
This encapsulates why young people are so adept at making older, experienced folk jump with surprise. They don’t care about precedents, or how they maybe should act when they’re left to themselves. At the end of the day, this is what true innovation relies on the power to carve an indelible mark on an industry by force of will, honesty, and a genuine need for help along the way.
Coupled with Eva’s humanitarianism, it’s a staunch reminder that not every tech project is necessarily used for the utmost good. At The Code Guy, we’re dedicated to making our clients’ web platforms as impressive and user-friendly as possible, but we also care about the moral value of our work. If we succeed and stretch ourselves, then people will be happier and more engaged, which is surely a nice thing to take away from any business!
Get on board!
Now that Eva’s set the benchmark, it’s up to you guys to follow her and prove how special you are to us fogies. We’ve taken on a couple of school students before for a glimpse into web coding, and we’re always open to new recruits.
Prototyping apps and websites that are yet to unveil their beauty to the public can be extremely gratifying, so if you’re a bright spark looking to get a flavour of coding careers, we’d love to hear from you! We’re a friendly bunch, and there’s always a brew on the go to calm first-day nerves.
Who knows… if you impress us, we could just offer you something permanent. As Eva might say, the joy of moulding the next generation is tres magnifique.