Appfrica Labs Launches 10,000 Hours Initiative

In college, when my thinking about communities first began to mature, I noticed the obvious discrepancy in Washington D.C. between the political elite who occupied a significant part of the northwest section of town, and remainder of the denizens, whose lower and lower-middle class communities lacked access to things like hospitals and super-markets. Since then, I've been a fan of community projects that put young people from communities with few resources in a new setting with a new vocabulary and a fresh take on the world. These shifts often provide the spark for new passions and new ideas to take home and expand.

For this reason, I'm excited about Appfrica Labs's new 10,000 Hours Initiative, described by Jon Gosier here:

Appfrica’s 10,000 Hour Initiative is aimed at offering a space for younger people to pursue their passions alongside professionals working in the field. The concept is very much inspired by the 826 National Project, which offers kids in the U.S. an after school hours community center where they can work alongside professionals who act as tutors and mentors. The name comes from Malcom Gladwell’s OUTLIERS, where he theorizes that it takes about 10,000 hours of practice for anyone to become truly exceptional at doing something. Of course we want to help offer those hours.

[...] The first space will be at my office in Kampala where I’ll encourage students interested in programming, new media and blogging to come by after school hours to spend a bit of extra time either working on their homework or learning new things from myself and my staff. Here they’ll have access to our staff, our internet connection, books, our computers and other resources that they can experiment with.

I find this to be a remarkably creative act of sharing, and one that can be highly successful with few resources other than a willingness to be occasionally generous with ones time.