Czechitas is empowering women to build new skills and careers in tech. Learn about the success stories of Czechitas graduates who now work at Apify and keep their active involvement with the organization.
Apify recently hosted another Czechitas meetup and training session at its office in Lucerna. This time, the focus wasn't just on web scraping. Apify women took their involvement to the next level by assisting students with data extraction and mentoring them for the upcoming term.
Czechitas is a non-profit organization dedicated to promoting diversity in IT and enhancing digital proficiency with women and youth. Czechitas teaches women, girls, and children to code in various languages, test software, and analyze complex data. Since 2014, the organization has, with their friendly and accessible evening courses and summer camps, helped thousands to fulfill their dream of getting involved in information technology and working in new fields. Most courses are in the Czech language, but there are some in English.
This approach empowers students to ask questions freely, fostering genuine learning regardless of their background or prior tech experience. Everyone starts out with the same goal — to learn and improve.
The start of a long-term partnership 🤝
Apify has been part of this journey for over six years and has been partnering with Czechitas to teach topics such as kanban agile project management, and, of course, web scraping, helping students understand and use the Apify platform.
Also, Apify mentors teams working on special projects. In 2019, Apify was involved in the star project of the Data Academy—an application aimed at helping the parents of children with disabilities. In 2020, Apify mentored teams working on Za vedou, which is all about bringing together scientists and the general public.
Another notable project completed with Apify mentors involved determining whether terror attacks were being overreported by the Czech media, a study that features as one of Apify success story.
Apify's ongoing partnership with Czechitas
Apify mentors student projects each semester, supporting Czechitas' diverse course offerings. These include an intensive three-month program with frequent classes. Partner companies and grants help keep courses accessible. The Digital Academy teaches technical skills and career transition, including interview preparation. Apify conducts mock interviews for students, offering feedback. Apify’s focus is primarily on data and web scraping instruction.
The Academy opens with technical lessons. By weeks 5 or 6, students select project topics and present their visions at a matching event. There, pairs of students are assigned a mentor. These mentors then guide each pair in developing accurate and feasible projects throughout the program.
As an official partner and sponsor, Apify supports Czechitas by providing free data scraping services, running Actors for free, and, in some cases, building custom scrapers to meet their needs.
Apify and Czechitas now đź‘Ł
This semester, Apify supports Czechitas' Data and Web Digital Academies. For the Data Academies in Brno and Prague 2024, Apify mentors 34 students, working in 17 pairs at each location.
Four Apifiers - Miša, Zuzka, Martina, and Kačka - are Czechitas Academy graduates themselves. Their journeys from students to mentors at Apify showcase the effective partnership between the two organizations.
"Making a career change is terrifying, but the supportive community from Czechitas, including mentors and colleagues, helps overcome this fear. You do not only get the technical knowledge and career support, but a community. The academy is not only theoretical, but also practical, so you can see the results of your studies.”
-Miša Fialova, Czechitas Graduate and current Product Manager at Apify
KaÄŤka is a Front-end Developer at Apify and was part of Czechitas two years ago. She continues her involvement, as she was truly inspired at the Academy by meeting women who successfully switched careers. She was happy to be surrounded by such a supportive environment and energized atmosphere.
“I really enjoyed the Czechitas course a lot and I am thrilled to now be part of Apify. I appreciate the chance that both Czechitas and Apify have given me. I’ve written some Apify Actors and scripts, but I am still learning a lot.”
-KateĹ™ina HronĂková, Czechitas Graduate and current Front-end Developer at Apify
Zuzka is also one of the graduates of Czechitas, and has been actively involved for more than 5 years. At the beginning, she was doing a lot of mentoring with Martina, who joined Apify as a Data analyst right after completing the Academy at Czechitas.
“After the course, I really wanted to start working in IT more than ever, and was lucky enough to get a job at Apify, a company I found inspiring from the very first evening of the academy, especially because of their non-profit projects. I actually get to work on some of those now, including helping new Czechitas students—and I couldn’t be happier.”
-Zuzka Pelechova, Czechitas Graduate and current Product Owner at Apify
Lastly, Martina enjoys giving back to the organization as a mentor, actively participating in hackathons, and is looking forward to the upcoming Apify lecture for the Czechitas Autumn run of Data in September. One of the web scraping projects she was involved with was part of the “Czechitas Digital Academy: Data” study program. The main goal of the project was to optimize Czechitas branch structure to make their courses more accessible for participants. The project was kicked off with analyzing commuting times from all around the Czech Republic to current and possible future locations of Czechitas’ offices.
