Oluwadamilola Soyombo is an award winning UI/UX Designer with seven years experience working in the technology environment.
She is a successful product designer with experience working in that capacity across several industries in 3 continents. Dami is the Founder of Skooqs, the first online learning platform where African children can get access to technology and creative courses at a young age.
She is also the founder of TCKZone, a not-for-profit reaching out to underserved community children with no funds and training them in Technology skills; thereby increasing the number of young minds in technology and preparing for the Future.
In 2018, as a youth graduating from the university after studying Computer Science, I was still totally unsure of what I wanted to specialize in or what real-life application did those theories I learned in school have. Once I got into technology fully, I kept saying “ I wish I had learned about these technology skills early enough, I would have been creating solutions to worldwide problems”.
I realized a lot of my friends also had this thought 2 years ago I founders TCKZone, a not-for-profit organization whose goal is to introduce kids in African communities to technology and other STEM fields; thereby increasing the number of young minds in technology and preparing for the Future. Little did I know that I would move on to building Skooqs the first online learning platform where African children can get access to technology and creative courses at a young age.
When covid hit and everyone was going online, we knew immediately that we needed to go online as well in order to reach more children with these skills.
Then we started zoom and telegram STEM training sessions. We recorded 3x growth in the number of kids we trained compared to physical sessions. I applied for an venture building program “STEMeIn Africa Venture Challenge” as TCKZone, however they reached out to us and said, we love what you are doing for African kids, and we absolutely love your team, however we don’t accept not-for-profits organization.
In that meeting they said, there are two options, can you come up with a for-profit idea within 5days and if we love it you can proceed in the program, or option 2 we can end the conversation here and thanks for applying. In that moment, I took up the challenge, and with my team, mentors, friends, advisors and with prayers, we were able to deliberate on different ideas and eventually came up with Skooqs. Exciting right?
This happened mid Early July 2021, we qualified for the STEMeIn venture program, and after 3 months Skooqs emerged the winner in October. Skooqs, also won the Injini Edtech, virtual bootcamp in November.
Skooqs was also selected for the WITI program by EDC. In the space of 5 months, we have moved from just being an idea, to having the product live, with courses, instructors, early users and schools.
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