For 18-yr-old Mohammad Shirmohammadi, accessibility cuts both techniques.
A senior at Arcadia Superior Faculty in Southern California in close proximity to Pasadena, “Mo,” as he’s recognized to family and pals, is the founder and leader of a 501c3 non-profit organization called Code Can Bridge. Launched last summer season, the project gives free of charge computer programming workshops to students with mental disabilities. Code Can Bridge describes by itself on its website as “the youth fighting to deliver pupils with mastering disabilities equal accessibility to laptop science education and learning.”
Code Can Bridge has a video clip on YouTube introducing on their own. On its internet site, the group states their mission is to “bridge the digital divide and earnings inequality widespread in today’s culture… [by giving] students with mastering disabilities equal option in computer science education and learning, empowering them with technical expertise even though also endorsing inclusivity in just the tech field and modern society as a entire.”
Throughout a current job interview more than videoconference during his college day, Shirmohammadi stated Code Can Bridge was born purely from his ambition.
While buddies and friends entertain on their own with pedestrian hobbies such as movie game titles and other functions, Shirmohammadi is a go-getter. He’s hellbent on creating an early but everlasting dent in the universe, pushed by technological innovation.
“I’m an individual who enjoys spearheading astounding tasks this kind of as Code Can Bridge,” he stated of his inclination to start the firm. “I’m an individual who’s fascinated in administration—coming alongside one another with a group of men and women who are like-minded peers, [and] coming with each other with them and expressing, ‘Okay, fellas, we require to program this event… we need to begin this organization’ and just brainstorming with them [and] collaborating. I love that whole course of action of just using that initiative—planning an party or setting up a club, just coming jointly with the officers or other pupils want to enable out. I obtain pure pleasure in that. I’m incredibly passionate about that.”
Shirmohammadi could have unbridled ambition now, but it was not usually the circumstance. He told me prior to his freshman yr, in 9th grade, he was fairly a lot an typical teen obsessed with what he named “materialistic” goods like the aforementioned video clip games, outfits, and extra. It wasn’t right until he took a personal computer science class that his frame of mind shifted. He was straight away captivated by the potentiality of personal computer program to do very good in the earth, citing Steve Employment and Mark Zuckerberg’s respective journeys to hook up people today by using engineering.
“I observed this [learning computer science] as an opportunity,” Shirmohammadi claimed. “Computer science is so impactful. We dwell in a world that is essentially personal computer-driven, and issues are getting far more and additional virtual and laptop-pushed. I observed it as a excellent