Ed Farm inspires students and adults to discover and explore technology

Jobs of the Future

Ed Farm prepares all ages for success in the workforce

PHOTOS COURTESY OF ED FARM

A teacher fellow instructs her student during Oxmoor’s STEAM Day.

BY LAUREN H. DOWDLE

Students take driver’s education in school to learn how to drive. Others may take classes at the trade school to learn specialized skills. Anything students can do to prepare for the workforce is a good opportunity.

After seeing the findings from a local market report, city leaders began realizing the growing need for more students and adults to learn technical skills if Birmingham was to be successful in the future. And that led to the creation of Ed Farm.

Short for Education Farm, Ed Farm offers opportunities for children, college students, and adults to learn new skills that will help them now and in the future. Waymond Jackson came on as CEO last spring, which is when the nonprofit officially got its start.

He says the idea for Ed Farm grew from the Birmingham community and leaders. A local group then travelled to Chicago to meet with Apple to explain the need the city had, including the types of jobs and training Birmingham would need in the next decade.

Leaders had recently completed a market report, so they knew the exact types of jobs and training the city needed — mainly ones focused on people having a higher level of digital skills, like coding.

“We wanted to be in control of how we shaped the new generation of leaders for the workforce. For the economy to grow, we have to teach those skills at an early level,” Jackson says. “The goal was to provide the traditionally underserved the training and tools they needed to get high-quality, high-paying jobs.”

A small group continued to have conversations with Apple about creating a deeper level of involvement for work in Birmingham, which is how the vision for Ed Farm came to light.

“The ability to learn to code or to acquire digital skills is 21st Century learning,” Jackson says. “It’s the entry-level learning of what you need to get your foot in the door. It’s critical with talking about jobs of the future. We want everyone to have access to those skills — not just those in affluent positions.”

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Ed Farm works to give students, teachers, and other community members the digital tools they need to thrive in today’s market.

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Similar programs can cost anywhere from $9,000 to $18,000 for a 16-week course. But, Ed Farm is able to offer this training to the community at no cost. For those who already work several part-time jobs, for example, Ed Farm has a stipend program that allows them to position themselves in a better place so they aren’t working multiple jobs.

They partnered with Birmingham City Schools to teach those skills to K-12 students, as well as instructing them on how they can make a sustainable impact in the workforce one day. The student fellows program for middle schoolers has its own state-approved elective now.

“We want to create an inventive world where all people have access to the resources they need to fill or create the jobs of the future,” Jackson says.

Ed Farm also offers resources and training for educators through their teacher fellows program, which allows them to learn code and infuse that into their own curriculum. Their pathways program teaches coding to adults, and they also offer a coding boot camp to the community based off of Apple’s Swift programming language.

“It introduces coding to people who might not have been before through a language that’s meant for everyone to be able to use,” Jackson says. “Digital skills are what we’re trying to equip the community with.”

Jackson say they realized the need to focus on higher education, as well, which is why the Propel Center was created. This is the centralized hub they use to teach, train, and provide access to historically black college students. They teach everything from coding and entrepreneurship to artificial intelligence (AI) and augmented reality (AR).

For Jackson, his favorite part about working with Ed Farm is seeing and hearing the stories of the people they’re able to impact. There’s the parent of one of their eighth graders who went through the boot camp and is now a developer for a start-up company. Or, it’s the stories of families who are all participating in the program.

“We’re providing a powerful opportunity for families to learn together,” he says. “It’s completely accessible to everyone in the community.”

By the end of the year, they hope to be in about 10 school districts across the state.

“It’s been exciting to see how the community has accepted what we’re doing, especially in a time like this,” he says.

For more information or to apply for one of their programs, visit Edfarm.org.