Facebook launches scholarship programmes in Indonesia

• Available to Facebook’s Developer Circles community members
• Indonesia as the first country to run this scholarships programmes

TO SUPPORT the local developer community’s growth in Indonesia, Facebook launched two scholarship programmes for its Developer Circles (DevC) community.

DevC is a global community-driven programme for developers to connect, learn, and collaborate with each other online and offline.

A total of 2,500 scholarships will be offered for qualified DevC members to be trained through Facebook’s Javascript Development course. Upon completion of the free course, participants will be certified.

Facebook is also partnering with Hacktiv8 (a coding bootcamp programme) to provide an additional 15 scholarships for an on-the-campus immersive programme, which aims to transform beginners into full-stack developers in 12 weeks.

Facebook director of developer partnerships and programme Konstantinos Papamiltiadis (pic) says that Indonesia is the first country to receive these scholarship programmes.

“We see a gap between academia and the industry. These developers are able to pick up some skills through the programme and are ready to be hired by startups, tech companies, and even unicorns.”

Registration for the programme is now open and classes will commence in early 2019. This programme will brings in local mentors as well as those from the US, Singapore, and India.

Facebook launched its first DevC Indonesia in Malang in late 2016. To date, it has nine DevC communities (Jakarta, Bandung, Surabaya, Malang, Yogyakarta, Semarang, Bali, Batam, and Medan) with more than 18,000 members.

Papamiltiadis says that Facebook is planning to work with universities and the government to boost the quality of local developers.

“Indonesia has contributed 10% of developers globally and that encourages us to keep investing in this country.” He did not disclose the sum invested in the country.

Other than the scholarship programme, Facebook will also launch ‘Lab Innovation Indonesia’ which is dedicated to developers, innovators, and startups in multiple locations across Indonesia, offering training and workshops to help them advance their skills.

In addition, Facebook also launched the Fb Start programme which is designed to empower startups to build and scale their products by providing free tools, services and training by Facebook’s team.