Volunteering as a Facebook Developer Circles Study Group Facilitator
The months within the Developer Circles has taught me a great deal. It struck me as a mixture of delicacies, one that has not only influenced my technological skills and helped me climb high in the career ladder but also was a gate towards connecting with a lot of exceptional people with whom fruitful interactions have taken place.
By reading this article, you may expose yourself to the beginning of an amazing experience, which I urge you, fellow reader, to not pass up.
What is Developer Circles from Facebook?
Developer Circles from Facebook are communities of innovators, where aspiring and experienced developers receive free tools to build new skills, grow ideas and boost their careers.
Each Circle is managed by a developer community leader who supports an online Facebook Group, hosts local events, and shares the latest news on Facebook technologies.
Members benefit from expanding their networks with fellow developers and industry experts, gaining special access to educational resources from the Facebook team and partners, and taking part in a range of skillset and career-building initiatives.
What is the Developer Circles Training Courses?
Developer Circles Training Courses is a series of premium online training opportunities to a limited number of developers that provide tools for members to grow their core technology skill sets and boost their career growth.
The training courses I joined launched in May 2019 and provided access to three different leading online education Developer Circles’ partners, the first one is OpenClassrooms where the beneficiaries will have a Premium Solo 3-month subscription to learn Font-End Web Development. The second one is DataCamp to learn Data Science for 5 weeks. The third one is Udacity to learn Deep Learning for 4 months.
The program mentioned above has resulted, I am glad to say, to the making of study groups worldwide.
Purpose of forming Study groups all around the world in each Training Course.
After a thorough evaluation of the applications, some applicants were selected to get the online scholarship in one of the Training Courses and to make the program more significant, Facebook Developer Circles resorted to form Study Groups for each Training course. Thus, the purpose of a study group is to provide a community in which scholars can learn, share knowledge, collaborate with other developers and build new ideas.
A Facilitator’s responsibilities
The primary goal of a Study Group Facilitator is to ensure that Developer Circles members in the Developer Circles Training Program from my circle complete the online training course while supporting them through offline Study Group meetups and online in the Training Courses Facebook Groups.
I was selected to join Track 1 of the OpenClassrooms: Front-End Web Development course after I filled out a form where I provided my resume and a motivational letter. Then, I was offered to become a facilitator and as I am always eager to take any initiative that contributes to the development and progress of the IT community in Tunisia, I accepted.
So from June to August 2019, I volunteered my time, knowledge, and enthusiasm to support members in the Developer Circles Training Program from Tunisia Circle.
At first, I created a private group to communicate with the scholarship beneficiaries. Then, I provided the resources to start learning and made sure that every member has access to the courses. Moreover, I started programming the offline meetups and by the end of the journey, I succeeded to make four offline study group meetups.
Scholars were challenged to submit final projects in every course and in the JavaScript provided course many had problems dealing with the final project, so I managed to correct some code and then we worked as teams to make sure that everyone finishes successfully his project.
It is not a bed of roses though!
I always make sure that all the scholars agree on a date for the meetup before programming it, so after setting a date for the second meetup, only one scholar made it, at first I was down, but then I managed to make voice calls with learners where we talked about their progression with the courses and helped them with some learning issues.
What I made was very fruitful, the scholars’ interaction was sublime, they become more eager to learn and more engaged with the courses to complete them all.
Why would you consider becoming a Facebook Developer Circles Study Group Facilitator?
I joined the Facebook Group for Study Group Facilitators all around the world where I got the chance to communicate with the Facebook team and connect with other Study Group Facilitators. And by submitting a Study Group Meetup report after each meetup, I got a lot of compliments that made me feel proud, I also made a lot of friends from India, Kenya, Uganda, Nigeria…
By the end of the program, I was recognized as a facilitator by Facebook and was proud to be part of a global initiative; impacting, growing local communities and empowering more developers to build successful apps.
To conclude, I encourage everyone to join their Facebook Developer Circle, benefit from outstanding opportunities provided by The Developer Circles Team from Facebook, apply for the scholarship and enjoy being a leader.
I’m now more confident, more motivated with an outstanding thirst for leading in Tunisia.
