Saeed Jabbar, a Guyanese-American technology educator, intends to provide youths living in Guyana with the necessary tools and skills training for a technology-focused workforce.
Through the non-profit organisation ‘Inclusion’ (Cadena Dev), Jabbar recently announced that Guyanese can join over 12,000 persons around the world to receive training in coding. Cadena’s tech-educators are software engineers from some of the top companies in web developing.
Jabbar and his family relocated from Parika, East Bank Essequibo to Queens, New York, when he was just nine-years-old and that’s when he developed a love for video games and later, an interest in coding.
By age 16, he was already developing websites for persons, earning US$1,500 per client. Making money was a big deal for a teenager and he decided this was going to be his career. He has since worked for several huge investors in programmes and websites and also did marketing and branding for several concerts and festivals.
“I had to think what else do I want to do in my career and I thought let me just volunteer and teach people to code in Queens here and a handful of 20 people, 80 people, one hundred people wanted in.
“We decided to create a non-profit and I went that angle because I didn’t want to charge people US$20,000 to learn this skill that can be life changing,” Jabbar said.
The tech-educator said since then, teenagers and adults from 149 countries have benefitted from the organisation.
Jabbar and his team assists persons by connecting them with investors and job opportunities. In fact, Jabbar had several instances similar to his own where he helped a 16-year-old in Nigeria land his first job.
For Jabbar, it’s about getting as many persons skillfully trained so that they can have jobs as the world embraces the digital era.
“I am going to give free access to all Guyanese to access the platform if they go to www.cadena/dev they’ll all get free access.
“The next step is exploring how we can work with public and private partners. His Excellency President Dr Irfaan Ali has made AI a priory. I think this is a first step, giving them access to all the courses, giving them access to the AI tools. If students can text someone, they can use an AI tool.”
Acknowledging that access to these tools could have been introduced sooner, Jabbar said it has been challenging to enter the market because of the inability to reach agencies.
He said that difficulty accessing internet and the lack of resource for coding in schools is an issue that must be addressed and he is open to extending his assistance to ensure that there is on-the-ground training available.
There are many investors who cover the financing required for the thousands of persons being trained and then these persons are offered jobs within this field.
“We’re adding more courses, we’ve got a ton of courses in our library like Artificial Intelligence, learn how to code generative AI art, python coding,” Jabbar said when asked about new additions to the organisation.
