The GROW Leadership Academy hosted its 4th Digital Boot camp since its launch in January 2013. It is a biannual boot camp where a selected number of students are afforded the opportunity to host and maintain their own websites provided that they meet certain requirements within the GROW Leadership Academy program.
The Digital Boot camp runs over a period of 5 days where professionals are invited to assist the students with their websites each day. These professionals include people from our founding partners, WebGrowth, GivenGain and WooThemes.
During these 5 days, recruits are taught specific modules that will assist them in making sure their websites are amongst the best. These modules include design and development, which focuses on programming within the context of creating online websites, such as the Content Management System (CMS) and WordPress.
Another module that is covered is called Search Engine Optimization better known as SEO. This component is of utmost importance as they go in depth on how their websites can be ranked on one of the most well-known search engines, Google. They are also taught the importance of keyword research and targeting and link building strategies.
Within the last module, Crowd-Raising, better known as Crowd-Funding, recruits were given the fundamental tools on how to go about funding a campaign for a cause. At the same time, they were given the insights on how Non-Profit and Non-Government Organisations are able to continue providing for the community through Crowd-Funding.
On the fifth day of the Digital Boot-Camp, the recruits were given the opportunity to present their websites that they’ve been working on to a panel of judges. aThe panel consists of previous Digital Boot camp Alumni. Each website is then assessed by these judges according to the following criteria; Content, Appearance, Pages, Plug-ins, and lastly, Links. At the end of the day, the top 3 websites is given a premium theme to the value of $100, courtesy of WooThemes.
Well done to the winners as well as to all the recruits for their amazing work over the last week. We look forward to greater things from the students.
