Unleash the Potential of Our Programs’ Alumni

This blog was posted on behalf of Michal Dzoga. Michał was the youngest advisor to the President of Poland between 1999-2004 in charge of new technologies. He has also created the biggest corporate foundation in Poland for Polish Telecom, which he chaired till 2010, when he took the Corporate Affairs role at Intel.

It is predicted that there will be 105,000 IT specialist jobs created in Poland by 2025; however, it is also predicted that many of these IT specialist positions will remain vacant due to the lack of available skilled workers. To address this, we are working to fill the gap.

In 2017, as part of the Intel® Innovation Generation initiative, we launched the pilot program, Intel® Make Tomorrow, around the world, including in Poland, to give young people hands-on experiences with technology. Upon launching our pilot program, we spotted a tremendous synergy opportunity through already existing programs. We linked the biggest student volunteering program in Europe with a consortium of partners to support women careers in IT (www.itforshe.pl). Through this effort, we trained 50 female student volunteers to become Make Tomorrow trainers that would then reach out and share their learnings with 1000 kids across Poland.

Joanna, a student of Technical University in Kraków, Poland, was one of our 2016 Make Tomorrow trainers. As a Make Tomorrow trainer, she and other trainers took on an incredible summer holiday journey to Lubaczów, a town on the border of Ukraine (with approximately 12,000 inhabitants). Equipped with sensor sets, and 3D printers, these Make Tomorrow Trainers had the opportunity to work with more than 60 students within a five day span. This unique experience was the first time these students had opportunity to program robots, code, and create with technology. The students’ enthusiasm was so overwhelming and their creativity was more than any of the trainers could have imagined. For instance, 13-year-old, Nadia used what she learned to create a “smartwatch with pulse detection” and 13-year-old, Natalia created an intelligent shoe with ultrasonic sensors allowing object detection for visually impaired people.

This journey proved to Joanna and the other Make Tomorrow trainers that having a great experience with passionate trainers are just the key to inspire creativity, solution based learning, and fun among young people. Moreover, by working with partners that support women in IT careers, our Make Tomorrow program is supporting gender parity and providing youth with diverse role models.

Want more? Watch Make Tomorrow trainers in action here.