Miami had a teacher shortage, so a student started teaching coding at the library

Florida had a public school teacher shortage, and Arihant Jaggi’s older brother Aryaman was feeling it at Beach High. So in late 2022 the brothers started running grassroots coding sessions at the North Shore Library.

Refresh Miami, in a story carried by WLRN, reports that the effort became the Young Coders Initiative (YCI) in May 2023. Jaggi, now a senior at Cushman High School, is its president.

A branch model

YCI is built so that other high schoolers can start local chapters. WLRN counts 18 active chapters, more than 100 high school volunteers and over 4,000 volunteer hours. It reports that YCI has reached over 10,000 students. The curriculum starts with Python and extends to Java, HTML, JavaScript and C++, on a custom platform with coding simulators.

Partners such as Breakthrough Miami, Achieve Miami and Overtown Youth Center host YCI workshops. “They gave us the opportunity to teach during their Super Saturdays,” Jaggi said.

A Global Ambassadors Program in India and the UAE provides longer-term instruction to more than 1,000 students, the story says.

The laptop point

Teaching code to kids without computers has an obvious flaw. “You need a laptop to code,” Jaggi told Refresh Miami, and “the best donation we can make is giving a laptop to these students.” YCI says it has given out over $9,500 in laptops, scholarships and hackathon prize money, including $5,000 in laptops won through the Samsung Solve competition.

Its October 25 hackathon, at Cushman, expected 10 to 12 teams working on agentic AI for local community change. Jaggi wants prizes to include internships, not just cash. “Money is pretty cool, but an internship is much harder to get,” he said.

Cushman’s own profile confirms the May 2023 founding and the headline numbers. Both accounts are close to the organization, so treat the totals as self-reported.