Speaker 1: Pushkin. This is solvable. I'm Jacob Weisberg. If they can
Speaker 1: decode information and build a website or build an up
Speaker 1: and get some skills to help them get money, they
Speaker 1: wouldn't be trafficked, they wouldn't be young prostitutes, they wouldn't
Speaker 1: be abused because they have to depend on someone else.
Speaker 1: So I'm trying to change society problems at the same
Speaker 1: time giving young women skills so they don't end up
Speaker 1: like myself. Mary amgem is the founder of I Am
Speaker 1: the Code, or organization teaches young people computer literacy and coding.
Speaker 1: According to the Worldwide Web Foundation, men continue to be
Speaker 1: twenty one percent more likely to be online than women,
Speaker 1: and they're around fifty percent more likely to be online
Speaker 1: when we look at the world's least developed countries. That
Speaker 1: gap represents a huge difference in access acts as to information,
Speaker 1: access to learning, and engagement with the rest of the world.
Speaker 1: We are helping young women to become due to the intelligent.
Speaker 1: They knew how Instagram was crazy, how Facebook was created,
Speaker 1: and we help them get into the information where they
Speaker 1: knew how actually the solution were created. My interview with
Speaker 1: Maryam jam first Round last year, we wanted to air
Speaker 1: it again as a bit of holiday inspiration. Mariam's example
Speaker 1: shows that people who seem to have the least power
Speaker 1: in the world can make a tremendous difference through sheer
Speaker 1: determination and creative thinking. It's also a reminder that smart
Speaker 1: investments can have a transformative impact on the lives of
Speaker 1: large numbers of people. My solvable is to get one
Speaker 1: million women and girls to learn how to code by
Speaker 1: the year twenty twenty. Mary. Obviously, your efforts to teach
Speaker 1: girls to code reflects your own experience. I wonder if
Speaker 1: you can tell me a little bit about how you
Speaker 1: came to this idea. I am from Senegal, West Africa.
Speaker 1: That's where I was born. When I was growing up,
Speaker 1: I didn't have any education, so I didn't go to school.
Speaker 1: I couldn't read and write until I was sixteen years old,
Speaker 1: and when I was eleven years old, I was abused
Speaker 1: by my colonic teacher. My country is a Muslim country,
Speaker 1: so when I was thirteen years old, I was trafficked
Speaker 1: from Senegal to France. I ended up in the UK,
Speaker 1: so I used to do cleaning jobs and working in
Speaker 1: bars and hotels. I see people in suit and things
Speaker 1: like that. And I wanted to find a job. And
Speaker 1: I remember that, you know, some of the ladies were
Speaker 1: telling me, you know, we can't find your job because
Speaker 1: you don't have any skills. We can't put you in banks,
Speaker 1: or we can't put you, you know, in supermarkets things
Speaker 1: like that, because you need to communicate. Also you need
Speaker 1: to speak English. My English was very, very broken. And
Speaker 1: then slowly, slowly I started going to a local library
Speaker 1: and learning how to read, and you know, being very
Speaker 1: disciplined and focus and every day I'll spend two hours
Speaker 1: at the library. And then I started learning match and
Speaker 1: how to imput data on Excel. I started to learn
Speaker 1: how to code. In that time, Google was born. On
Speaker 1: their platform, they had a blog. People can write and
Speaker 1: then the blog will be converted, you know, so you
Speaker 1: can write some texts and the text will be converted
Speaker 1: into into blog. And I discovered that. But in that
Speaker 1: time I had had so many anger in me and
Speaker 1: sow me frustration. I was asking myself why I was
Speaker 1: in the UK, you know, why my mum abandoned us
Speaker 1: as children. So I had a lot of vucations and
Speaker 1: then I was looking at BBC and TV and all
Speaker 1: these channels and then I just saw Bob Geldof and
Speaker 1: Bono doing the doing the live aid things. That just
Speaker 1: really makes me very upset. And I think that the
Speaker 1: way they came about was like, you know, okay, we
Speaker 1: are the saviors of Africa. We're going to save the
Speaker 1: whole world. You were upset because it was it seemed
Speaker 1: condacn the interial. Yeah, it was really weird because I
Speaker 1: saw that, you know, like everybody was talking about poverty.
Speaker 1: And then I said, well, you know, actually I was
Speaker 1: this sort of I was this young women in Africa
Speaker 1: growing up and you didn't do anything about it, and
Speaker 1: you know, it wasn't their fault really, but I think
Speaker 1: people could understand my frustration. And then I wrote an
Speaker 1: open letter to Bono and Bob Geldof for the first
Speaker 1: time and asked them to back off from Africa. You
Speaker 1: wrote to them, just to make this clear. I'm the
Speaker 1: blog that you created after teaching yourself to read and write,
Speaker 1: teaching yourself to code, and building yourself at a at
Speaker 1: a public library. Yeah, my first open letter was to
Speaker 1: Bob Geldof and Bono. They were just asking them to
Speaker 1: back off from Africa. And then the Guardiant Pick It
Speaker 1: Up show it to Bob Geldof. He didn't like it.
Speaker 1: You know, Bono didn't like it either, and they thought
Speaker 1: that I was very ungrateful as an African. And then
Speaker 1: you know, in the end they actually saw, you know,
Speaker 1: my point, and that created a one International, which is
Speaker 1: now Bono's deization. I got called to come in and
Speaker 1: find a way to help them understand that the message
Speaker 1: they're trying to portray in Europe is to too different
Speaker 1: to what's happening on the ground. It's such an amazing
Speaker 1: story that after suffering this abuse and neglect, lack of education, sixteen,
Speaker 1: you taught yourself to do all of these things that
Speaker 1: people with tremendous opportunities in many cases haven't haven't learned
Speaker 1: to do, such as coding the way you have. I mean,
Speaker 1: it raises the question, Marian, whether you're just an extraordinary
Speaker 1: person or whether you're a model that a lot of
Speaker 1: other poor people can follow. I get to ask that question.
Speaker 1: I don't think I'm special, but I think that the
Speaker 1: trauma I've lived as a child you know, we'll never
Speaker 1: go away, still is still on me. And I see
Speaker 1: that with young girls growing up in refugee comes. For example,
Speaker 1: when you've been through difficulty in life, and you've been
Speaker 1: through trauma. You try to find a way to get by.
Speaker 1: And this is the mentality I have now where I
Speaker 1: leave day by day. Every days it is another day,
Speaker 1: and I just think that, you know, I become very
Speaker 1: tenacious in getting things done. Why the focus on coding
Speaker 1: as the skill that can provide this vehicle, particularly for girls,
Speaker 1: to get out of their terrible circumstances. I mean, presumably
Speaker 1: there are lots of skills you could learn as a
Speaker 1: young person that would help you out of poverty, help
Speaker 1: give you access to power to the wider world. It
Speaker 1: started when I started to learn match at the library
Speaker 1: and then starting reading dictionaries and understanding words, because bear
Speaker 1: in mind, when I came to the UK, I couldn't
Speaker 1: understand English. I couldn't decode the information, and so you
Speaker 1: could put words in front of me, I wouldn't really
Speaker 1: understand them. I used to pick up books with numbers
Speaker 1: and I start coding. Really using XHML was from the beginning,
Speaker 1: because I could put some numbers, then it will translate
Speaker 1: on a page. And then I think that what I'm
Speaker 1: trying to do now is trying to talk to girls
Speaker 1: about digital skills and many many of the application we
Speaker 1: use around the world, for example, people don't know how
Speaker 1: it was made. And I've been always fascinated in how
Speaker 1: things are made and designed and you know who is
Speaker 1: behind the things doing things. And I like to see
Speaker 1: things being translated in numbers, but also being translated in words,
Speaker 1: and I see this with refugees now and seeing refugees
Speaker 1: and people in Lebanon, for example, when you are poor
Speaker 1: or you've been traumatized you are, you consume information very,
Speaker 1: very quickly. So I have a photographic memory where I
Speaker 1: don't forget things. Although that combination have helped me to
Speaker 1: learn how to code seven coding languages in two years.
Speaker 1: And then I had to go back to the agency
Speaker 1: to tell them, actually, now I'm a coder, and that
Speaker 1: he didn't understand what I was saying. So so now
Speaker 1: I'm a coder and I build the websites and I'm
Speaker 1: a full stack developer. I really like numbers and words.
Speaker 1: Your organization has the very suggestive and interesting name I
Speaker 1: Am the Code, which I guess speaks to that pride
Speaker 1: in learning it. But also you know, we use the
Speaker 1: expression cracking the code when you figure something out and
Speaker 1: it's not just learning to program and write software, but
Speaker 1: figuring out this larger code of how the world works.
Speaker 1: Am I reading too much into your in the name
Speaker 1: of your organization? No, No, you're absolutely right. But I
Speaker 1: think there was something else about it, because I think
Speaker 1: what happened is during the years, I was called to
Speaker 1: give a you know, a major speech at Devils and
Speaker 1: I was very very nervous, and I didn't know what
Speaker 1: to do and what to say. I've never met those influential,
Speaker 1: powerful people before. And then I said to my son,
Speaker 1: you know, what do you think I should say? My
Speaker 1: son said, well, mommy, you are the code. And what
Speaker 1: I translated from that conversation was, you know, I'm tenacious.
Speaker 1: I don't give up. You know, despite the childhood I had,
Speaker 1: I don't give up. And then despite that, I'm helping
Speaker 1: all the young women to get confidence. And that then
Speaker 1: created a massive conversation at Davos because I was the
Speaker 1: first senegalist who want to teach white middle class women
Speaker 1: in Guildford where I leave how to code, and now
Speaker 1: we have many many women coding there. But what I'm
Speaker 1: saying is that yes, you are the code. You can
Speaker 1: learn how to code but at the same time, you
Speaker 1: have the key to unlucky your life. You have the
Speaker 1: key to build your life. Despite all the challenges and
Speaker 1: all the difficulty, you can get this key and go
Speaker 1: in and open the doors for yourself and for other people.
Speaker 1: So I am the code is about coding at the
Speaker 1: same time, it's about giving women and girls power to
Speaker 1: go and change their lives. Software has traditionally been dominated
Speaker 1: by men, and so many of the issues we're seeing
Speaker 1: now around harassment and abuse online around software encoding discrimination
Speaker 1: seems to reflect to some extent that it's men who've
Speaker 1: written most of it. Do you see that as part
Speaker 1: of the problem you're addressing by bringing women into coding
Speaker 1: and software design. That's true, men men have done that.
Speaker 1: But I think also, you know, women used to crack
Speaker 1: the code, and they used to decode information, but they
Speaker 1: never had any visibility or any credit given to them.
Speaker 1: For many, many years, we had many women inventors who
Speaker 1: understood mathematics, centers and science. They understood so many you know,
Speaker 1: how the world was functioning. They actually, you know, if
Speaker 1: you just look at the GPS was invented by by
Speaker 1: a woman. But I think sometimes we just forgot those
Speaker 1: stories and those inventors who have helped us become who
Speaker 1: we are today. You know, we're not giving confidence to
Speaker 1: young women to go for it, not just you know,
Speaker 1: because they can, but also women have more empathy, they
Speaker 1: have more compassion and kindness when they designing solutions because
Speaker 1: they design solutions for their communities and for you know,
Speaker 1: the real problems. Men they design things because they you know,
Speaker 1: it's like cool and they can make money or they
Speaker 1: can just launch an IPO very quickly. But you know,
Speaker 1: women design things to you know, to help their communities
Speaker 1: and help their friends. That's what I saw my young
Speaker 1: women actually doing. And it's one thing to try to
Speaker 1: teach women to code and Guildford, it's another thing to
Speaker 1: try to teach young women to code and Senegal, for example.
Speaker 1: There must be a lot of obstacles to trying to
Speaker 1: set up and communicate what we're trying to communicate in
Speaker 1: some of the places you're trying to do it. Can
Speaker 1: you talk about some of those challenges. That's very true.
Speaker 1: We have a lot of challenges where the women we
Speaker 1: have in Guildford are totally different through women we have
Speaker 1: in the Refugi camp in Kenya in Senegal, but I
Speaker 1: would have learned during the last three years is that
Speaker 1: it's not a location problem. Is actually they all smart
Speaker 1: young women who wants to learn, you know, a different skill.
Speaker 1: So we have changed the world coding to digital skills.
Speaker 1: For example, we are helping young women to become digitally intelligent.
Speaker 1: They know how Instagram will it's crazy to how Facebook
Speaker 1: was created, and we help them get into the information
Speaker 1: where they know how actually the solution were created. And
Speaker 1: I think that if we start giving young women and
Speaker 1: girls the power to understand, you know, how wire frames
Speaker 1: are made and how things are written the code behind
Speaker 1: is how to edit it and how to review the
Speaker 1: code and how to make it more empetic for example,
Speaker 1: or how the AI, how the data was collected and
Speaker 1: who is involved. We're now in sixty four countries. I've
Speaker 1: seen so many young women and girls and it's really
Speaker 1: not a location problem, but it's a systematic problem. And
Speaker 1: that's why going and teaching young women and girls mathematics
Speaker 1: and basic science and helping them understand the global issues
Speaker 1: like climate change, gender equality, you know, how do you
Speaker 1: read this inequality and how do you get a bank account?
Speaker 1: Things like that have a young woman to become very
Speaker 1: powerful because she knows she's participating. That's how she changed
Speaker 1: her community, changed her lives, and then there's less abuse,
Speaker 1: for example, and she's very very confident afterward. I think
Speaker 1: the training sessions you run are open to boys as well,
Speaker 1: although maybe they're more girls than boys. Is there a
Speaker 1: difference in trying to teach girls or teach boys to code? No, no,
Speaker 1: there's not a big difference. The reason why we want
Speaker 1: you to include some of the boys because we when
Speaker 1: we set up I AM the Code and the mission
Speaker 1: was to actually get one million women and girls coders.
Speaker 1: And we find out that when we're doing the clubs,
Speaker 1: boys want to be part of it. And if you
Speaker 1: look into some Muslim countries like in Afghanistan, in Senegal,
Speaker 1: in Sudan, for example, we need to get the boys involved.
Speaker 1: And in Mali in ny Air because despite us going
Speaker 1: and teaching girls how to code, there are some social
Speaker 1: issues where the young woman is still you know, looked
Speaker 1: down to, you know, the parents are not very confident
Speaker 1: in letting them go. So we get the young boys,
Speaker 1: you know, who are almost like the brothers and their
Speaker 1: cousins to be part of the clubs and then support
Speaker 1: the young women to be part of it. In Senegal,
Speaker 1: we had to get some of the boys to come
Speaker 1: and support the young women. And we respect the culture
Speaker 1: of the countries, but it's very important which young boys
Speaker 1: gender equality and how to be kind to young women
Speaker 1: and girls, and then they usually work together. We just
Speaker 1: want to make sure that we create exhibit of balance
Speaker 1: but also help young boys to be part of the
Speaker 1: I Am the Good movement because I believe that the
Speaker 1: only way we can achieve gender equality is by educating
Speaker 1: boys and men to understand women issues. Some of the
Speaker 1: people you've taught have already started to have meatingful success
Speaker 1: in their careers and some of them are becoming entrepreneurs.
Speaker 1: Is that part of your mission? Are you helping to
Speaker 1: coach people to start their own businesses, to start their
Speaker 1: own organizations. Yeah. We we have women millionaires in Senegal,
Speaker 1: so we have amazing young women who are now entrepreneurs.
Speaker 1: They do amazing well in their countries. They're building solutions,
Speaker 1: they're sitting government for example, they sit in telecom companies.
Speaker 1: You know, some of our young girls and our mothers,
Speaker 1: their children are now coming back to the I AM
Speaker 1: the Code program that I Am the Code idea has
Speaker 1: been cooking for the last five years and beyond that.
Speaker 1: So all the young women have been mentoring for the
Speaker 1: last ten years have now become you know that I
Speaker 1: am the Code ambassadors. They're taking I Am the Code
Speaker 1: in their communities. He has almost become this family. Now
Speaker 1: people are paying back and giving back to the community
Speaker 1: and they're now building their businesses. Who are really really
Speaker 1: important for the Africa tech ecosystem because in the past,
Speaker 1: we didn't think about women as agent of change or
Speaker 1: agent of economic development, but we fought many African women
Speaker 1: and young women were seen as object of development, you know,
Speaker 1: the NGOs just you know, giving handout and helping them
Speaker 1: with agriculture programs things like that. But now the women
Speaker 1: actually designing their own e commerce sites, they're designing their
Speaker 1: own souls in Senegal. In Kenya, for example, they are
Speaker 1: climate change activists. They're using technology to create campaigns. For example,
Speaker 1: one of our young women in Kenya has done a
Speaker 1: lot of work on deforestation. So the idea really is
Speaker 1: to use technology as a way of empowering this young
Speaker 1: women and girls, but at the same time teaching them
Speaker 1: skills that will give them job, give them money and ultimately,
Speaker 1: you know, they become very proud of themselves. That's that's
Speaker 1: the goal of im record. You talk about teaching a
Speaker 1: million girls to code by twenty thirty in just a decade.
Speaker 1: How are you doing on that goal? And how realistic
Speaker 1: is that? Oh, it's very realistic. We've done so far
Speaker 1: fourteen thousand young women and girls are part of the
Speaker 1: I Am the Core program and we didn't have any
Speaker 1: peer in any marketing in sixty four countries. It's really
Speaker 1: overwhelming to see how the program has reached so many
Speaker 1: many women, not just in Africa, but across the world
Speaker 1: in China and Japan is very large now and it's
Speaker 1: quite a humbling to see young women having their lives
Speaker 1: changed through I Am the Code. I didn't expect that.
Speaker 1: So fourteen thousand to a million, you have, by my calculation,
Speaker 1: nine hundred and eighty six thousand together, How will you
Speaker 1: finance that? Who will help to support you in that
Speaker 1: incredibly ambitious goal. We will reash the goal because we
Speaker 1: have over twenty seven companies worldwide who have committed to
Speaker 1: the number already, and so we are working with corporates
Speaker 1: to get their staff members to become volunteers. We have
Speaker 1: women calling us they want to become champions, so they
Speaker 1: want to use their network to help spread the world.
Speaker 1: Like you know, your program is definitely going to help
Speaker 1: us get more visibility out there. And we also have
Speaker 1: digital clubs, we have hackatons, we have you know, so
Speaker 1: many boot camps. People are just joining because they can
Speaker 1: see that it makes sense. Now we have young girls
Speaker 1: actually coming to work for I Am the Code. Where
Speaker 1: am I No Listeners are hearing you talk and asking
Speaker 1: what they can do to help support your efforts and
Speaker 1: the goal general. What are some of the things that
Speaker 1: people listening might be able to do to advance the goal.
Speaker 1: They can definitely become mentors to the girls. They can
Speaker 1: become ambassadors of I Am the Code. They can run
Speaker 1: their own hecatons, they can provide space for us, they
Speaker 1: can be part of the you know, the movement to
Speaker 1: get young some of the young girls coding. We have
Speaker 1: many corporate organizations, for example, who are giving us space.
Speaker 1: They're giving us some hours to volunteer for I Am
Speaker 1: the Code, and they're opening their offices to have digital
Speaker 1: club and they're also traveling with us to meet the
Speaker 1: girls in a most difficult places around the world. We
Speaker 1: are the first organization to go into refugee camp in
Speaker 1: Kenya where the two hundred thousand people live in the
Speaker 1: refugee camp, eighteen thousands of them are women and girls.
Speaker 1: And they're the first young women and girls in a
Speaker 1: refugee camp to learn how to code. And we in
Speaker 1: slams within five US in Brazil. We are in places
Speaker 1: where I grow up as a young girl. And the
Speaker 1: reason why I'm going back there is to tell the
Speaker 1: world that those people they matter. By going back and
Speaker 1: holding those young girls and and helping them to be
Speaker 1: confident and to also gain a skill, I believe that
Speaker 1: coding is the future. If they can decode information and
Speaker 1: build the website or build an app, and get some
Speaker 1: skills to help them get money, they wouldn't be trafficked,
Speaker 1: they wouldn't be young prostitutes, they wouldn't be abused because
Speaker 1: they have to depend on someone else. So I'm trying
Speaker 1: to change society problems at the same time giving young
Speaker 1: women skills so they don't end up like myself. And
Speaker 1: how about here in the United States, Mariam, is there
Speaker 1: a role for your organization to play here? Are you
Speaker 1: active here? We have some major banks who won't support
Speaker 1: I am the code and hopefully we're going to go
Speaker 1: to deprived communities. Because our content is free. People can
Speaker 1: use them in prisons, they can use them in places.
Speaker 1: In the UK we go to prisons and places where
Speaker 1: we can rehabilitate people. So we're hoping that by the
Speaker 1: beginning of twenty twenty. I'm in the United States. It's
Speaker 1: such an odd, dacious idea to say someone who's been
Speaker 1: a victim of trafficking should be writing software. Have you
Speaker 1: seen other women who followed the kind of path that
Speaker 1: you did and had that extraordinary transformation? Yeah, I haven't
Speaker 1: seen it yet. I've seen many women who so many
Speaker 1: women who've been trafficked and had difficulty in their life,
Speaker 1: but mainly they go into the activism world and share
Speaker 1: their stories with other people around the world. But for me,
Speaker 1: that's not enough, and my pioneering system change. That's what
Speaker 1: I do. I change systems in countries and in government.
Speaker 1: And I believe that the reason why I was trafficked
Speaker 1: from Senegal and the reason why my mother actually abandoned
Speaker 1: us as children, and you know, I was abused and
Speaker 1: rapped by my chronic teacher in my country in Senegal,
Speaker 1: and ultimately traffic from Senegal is because the system of
Speaker 1: the country was broken. And so what I tried to
Speaker 1: do if I am the Code at the same time
Speaker 1: is how do you fix systems in countries? How do
Speaker 1: you educate government and the private sector to understand that actually,
Speaker 1: you know, if you mess up one child's life, you know,
Speaker 1: just messing up her life, but you're messing up the
Speaker 1: entire community's life. For example, we don't have birth certificate.
Speaker 1: We totally are incunito in Senegal. And I see this
Speaker 1: today in the refugi camp where you know, the worst
Speaker 1: is just watching things happening to two million, millions of
Speaker 1: women and girls from Senegal to Nepal. So unless someone
Speaker 1: come up with something very ambitious and very ruthless like
Speaker 1: I am the Code, nothing will happen. And I've seen
Speaker 1: change happening from Buenden areas to Senegal, just because I
Speaker 1: dare to be visible and I dare to tell the world.
Speaker 1: If you don't want to find out any more women
Speaker 1: being traffic and taken away, you have to change the
Speaker 1: system in the country. You don't want to have any
Speaker 1: more immigrants in Europe or in the United States, change
Speaker 1: the system in their countries, give them the skills, and
Speaker 1: as soon as you do that, they wouldn't need to
Speaker 1: come here. That's why I want young girls who have
Speaker 1: the skills in their countries and build their businesses in
Speaker 1: their countries, and if they want to travel they can
Speaker 1: have they can travel in a very legal way without
Speaker 1: being insulted. I'm just trying to fix some of the
Speaker 1: problems the world has failed to fix. Miriam jem is
Speaker 1: the founder of I Am the Code. Be sure to
Speaker 1: check out our show pages for ways that you can
Speaker 1: get involved with I Am the Code and learn more
Speaker 1: about coding and poverty eradication. This interview was edited by
Speaker 1: Chalk and Blade. Solvable is produced by Camille Baptista, Jocelyn Frank,
Speaker 1: Catherine Girardoo and Mia Lobell. I'm Jacob Weisberg.