Software bootcamp Makers has partnered with Muslamic Makers, a community of Muslim’ changemakers’, to collaborate on a sixteen-week software developer scholarship.

Makers has match-funded with the grant-making body the Aziz Foundation to award two fully-funded full-time scholarships worth £8,000 each to two winning candidates from the community of Muslamic Makers.

Muslamic Makers provides “a safe space for professionals of the Islamic faith” where they can collaborate and enjoy tech-related networking and upskilling opportunities through events, workshops, and scholarships.

The successful candidates will train as software engineers at the Makers bootcamp in London; will learn to code for free and be assisted in finding work as junior software developers at the end of term, earning between £30,000-£35,000 in their first year.

The scholarship aims to increase diverse representation in the tech industry by removing the financial barriers associated with digital skills training where people from Black, Asian, and minority ethnic (BAME) backgrounds only make up around 18% of the workforce, according to research by the British Computer Society (BCS).

The announcement of the scholarship programme comes after Makers launched a similar initiative in 2020 with Coding Black Females, which provided a small cohort of women with free software engineering training to help tackle the endemic lack of diversity in the UK’s technology sector.

Muslamic Makers CEO Arfah Farooq founded the organisation after working at Makers for two years. Commenting on the partnership with Makers, she said: “Having worked at Makers myself, I have first-hand experience of how transformative and career-defining the courses on offer are. That’s why I’m absolutely delighted to be working with them once again on such an important issue.

“With these scholarships, it shows that Makers is a true champion of diversity and using its considerable influence to play a key role in developing a fairer society. Thanks to the match-funding, we’re able to offer two scholarships at this stage and give members of our community an outstanding chance to relaunch their careers in the tech sector and open corridors of opportunity that traditionally and historically have been shut for Muslims.”

Claudia Harris, CEO of Makers, said: “We’re thrilled to announce this partnership with Arfah and Muslamic Makers. Her commitment to her community and advocating for inclusive spaces for Muslims is not only admirable but also aligns perfectly with our values as a company to address the diversity in the tech workplace. As a previous employee of Makers, she knows our ethos intimately and our courses inside and out. We’re excited to award these scholarships and support these women as they begin their careers in the digital world.”

To find out more about Muslamic Makers, click here.

In this article, you learned that:

• People from Black, Asian, and minority ethnic (BAME) backgrounds only make up around 18% of the UK’s tech sector workforce.
  
• Last year, Makers launched the Coding Black Females initiative which provided a small cohort of Black women with free software engineering training.
  
• Muslamic Makers are a community of Muslim ‘changemakers’ who offer upskilling and networking support in the tech sector.