CHANGE LIVES

Hack The Virus: Your contribution

Donate funds to university admission tests to low-income high school students in Colombia

Code For A Change has created a charitable campaign to support the education of low-income high school students in San Jose (Educational Institution), Circasia, Colombia by donating funds to cover the university admission test. IE San Jose is a public school whose students come from vulnerable families (domestic violence, child neglect, unemployment, among others). The professional future of these students is at risk, and we are here to offer our support. The exam costs £16 =~ $19 = ~ 95 thousand pesos colombianos per student. The minimum wage in Colombia ranges between £200-250 per month, and most of their family members do not have a job.

You can help them to continue their studies by donating or sharing this information.

FAQs

Why a campaign to help IE San Jose students?

Code For A Change, as an organisation created and led by Mariana Quiroga Londoño (@marianaql.science, +25K on instagram) , decided to launch a support campaign during the COVID-19 outbreak, aimed at supporting Colombian students. We identified that a lack of funds to afford their university admission test would affect the initiation of their higher education. In this first edition, we decided to select IE San Jose, as Mariana is Colombian, and the story of her family started in Circasia, Colombia.

How were beneficiary students selected?

In Colombia, citizens are classified based on their household income by levels or strata, they call them “Estratos”. There are 6 levels as follows:

Therefore, the beneficiary students are from household level 1 and 2. Importantly, these students have shown interest and curiosity for pursuing the right education, especially STEM fields (science, technology, engineering, math).

This data has been validated by Martha Liliana (Biology teacher at IE San Jose).

How is the goal of bringing the funds to students achieved?

It is imperative to clarify that Code For A Change has not signed any agreement with the public institution IE San Jose, this is a private scholarship we have organised and we have defined our criteria to select the students (see the previous section).

Each donation will be stored in Code For A Change’s Paypal account and, subsequently, split between the selected students.

Code For A Change WON’T be economically benefited from this campaign.

We hope you understand that this private help is only possible thanks to your altruistic donations, so Code For A Change cannot promise that the 10 students will get full technological access.