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Melissa Sariffodeen’s interest in computers started early. “My family got its first computer when I was 11,” the co-founder of Canada Learning Code says. “I soon realized I could go to different forums, inspect the code on a website and learn how to build (one).” She taught herself code by “trial and error,” eventually making a Harry Potter fan site and a drag-and-drop avatar creator. She excelled in a high-school computer class but wasn’t encouraged to continue. “I was one of two women in that entire course,” she says. “I didn’t see anybody like me doing it.”
But she kept at it. Her first real foray into the world or coding began after she graduated from Western University’s Ivey Business School in 2011 and started attending meetups for Toronto’s tech community. At one event, Sariffodeen connected with Heather Payne, who was just beginning a sales and marketing job at a local startup. “We were both interested in doing something entrepreneurial. And the barrier for us was tech knowledge,” says Sariffodeen. “Being self-taught, we didn’t know enough to substantially build a product.”
They held a brainstorming session to address the lack of women in tech, and that meeting birthed the first iteration of CLC, called Ladies Learning Code. “A month later to the day,” she says, “we hosted our first workshop.” That one — and the following three — sold out so quickly that Sariffodeen, Payne and their fellow founders, Laura Plant and Brianna Huges, knew they were onto something big.
Sariffodeen is now CEO of the organization, which officially rebranded as Canada Learning Code in 2017, with 37 full-time staff members running workshops across the country for Ladies Learning Code, Girls Learning Code, Kids Learning Code, Teams Learning Code and Teachers Learning Code.
The goal, Sariffodeen says, isn’t to get everyone writing code as a full-time job, although CLC does offer classes for more advanced learners considering a career shift. “It’s really about giving people agency in this digital world that goes beyond just consuming it,” she says. “There’s an important part of understanding how it’s built.”
All the workshops are available for free online and are funded by government support, sponsors and donations. CLC offers live, hands-on, real-time help — what Sariffodeen calls the organization’s secret sauce. “There are mentors there to help, because we find that often the biggest barrier is this little thing that gets you confused,” she says, referring to such flubs as, say, leaving out a semicolon while coding. “Having this high ratio of synchronous support really helps people, especially beginners, feel confident in trying this for the first time.”
In addition to pivoting from in-person to online learning during the pandemic, the CLC also shifted their course content to reflect how people now live, work and learn. It ran a workshops for small businesses and entrepreneurs to help them get online, teaching digital marketing, website building and using Google applications. It also provided extra support to teachers, offering courses on online instruction.
Sariffodeen is proud of how CLC handled the last 18 months but looks forward to returning to in-person workshops in such locations as tech-event rooms, libraries and community centres, while still offering online sessions. She says her focus in the next six to 12 months will be on continuing to support educators so that every child (or anyone else) in Canada can learn these skills.
“We want everyone,” she says, “especially groups that are underrepresented, to have access to be able to build the future.”
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