Education & Community

How Coding Education Is Creating Real Career Opportunities for Underserved Youth in Medellín

John Esteban Lugo Gomez knew the math of his days by heart. Twelve hours on the factory floor. Seven days a week. Minimum wage winding electrical coils at a lock manufacturing company eating less than he needed to keep up with debt, with almost no time left for himself or his family. He was 22 years old, and nothing in his current path suggested life would look different in five years.

He wasn’t lacking talent or drive. He was lacking a door.

That door turned out to be a laptop, a twice-weekly class, and a program that believed his zip code wasn’t his destiny.

May 23, 2026

Sin categoría

joven de pie con los brazos cruzados con piezas de arte al fondo

The Opportunity Gap Hiding Inside a Booming City

While John was counting hours on the assembly line, Medellín was undergoing one of Latin America’s most remarkable economic transformations. The city is now home to more than 3,400 technology companies, according to ProColombia, and Colombia’s tech employment sector has been growing at roughly 15% annually a rate that consistently outpaces the national economy.

Companies like Google, Microsoft, and Amazon have expanded operations here. Medellín is frequently cited by regional business media as the Silicon Valley of Latin America.

But John didn’t feel any of that.

Young people growing up in Medellín’s strata 1 and 2 neighborhoods, the hillside barrios where nearly half of Recode the Future’s students come from, are largely disconnected from that boom. Without access to technical education or professional networks, the options are narrow: informal work, economic instability, and jobs that pay little and demand everything.

The gap between the barrio and the boom is exactly what Recode the Future was built to close.

A Program Designed Around Real Barriers Not Ideal Conditions

The program started with a straightforward observation from a systems engineer: Colombia had a serious shortage of developers and a serious surplus of young people with untapped potential. The supply and demand were both real. They just weren’t connected.

With the support of Kind Footprint, a U.S. 501(c)(3) nonprofit that observation became a structured program. And from the beginning, it was designed around the actual obstacles its students face, not the obstacles a more privileged student population would face.

Every student receives access to a computer no personal device required. Classes run twice a week, Tuesdays and Fridays, in an after-school format so students don’t have to choose between education and existing obligations. Every session includes a nutritious meal, because learning while food-insecure isn’t really learning. Transportation support is included.

Stories like John’s are possible because donors fund every one of those details the meals, the equipment, the transportation, the instructors.

The curriculum covers HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Python, soft skills, and freelance readiness. Everything is taught in Spanish and built around a single question: can a graduate walk out of here and get hired immediately?

What Happens When the Top Students Graduate

Something the program didn’t fully anticipate: its best graduates want to come back.

As Recode the Future matured, the highest-performing students began returning as paid junior instructors creating an internal cycle of mentorship that now strengthens every new cohort. The people teaching the skills are people who recently needed them. That proximity matters in a classroom.

Which brings us back to John.

One Year That Changed Everything

John enrolled in Recode the Future at 22, still working the factory job while attending classes. About a year after completing the program, an opportunity opened through Kind Footprint and the Recode the Future network: a role as social media manager and web developer for the foundation itself.

The shift was immediate and it went far beyond salary.

“My life before was exhausting, no time for myself, no time for my family, eating less than I should just to keep up with debt. What changed wasn’t just the income. It was the stability, the daily learning, the experience of working with people from around the world on real projects without needing a university degree. My work and knowledge now reach places I never imagined. I’m genuinely grateful to the foundation and to every donor who made this possible.”

John Esteban, Web Developer & Project Manager, Kind Footprint“

Today, John builds and manages the very digital infrastructure that supports the program that changed his life. The financial improvement was real and immediate. But what stands out in his own words is something harder to quantify: the sense of stability, growth, and possibility that comes from work that compounds over time.

John isn’t an exception the program hopes to repeat someday. He is proof that the model already works.

One in Three Graduates Is Already Working in Tech

More than 30 students have been trained since Recode the Future launched. One in three graduates has already entered Colombia’s technology workforce in an industry where an entry-level developer earns between $13,600 and $18,000 USD per year, according to Colombia’s tech labor benchmarks for 2024–2025. That’s more than four times the national minimum wage.

For a young person from a strata 1 barrio in Medellín, that’s not just a better salary. It’s a different life for them, and for the families that depend on them.

Families that previously depended on factory wages now have members building careers in one of Colombia’s fastest-growing industries. The economic shift doesn’t stop at the graduate.

The estimated cost to train one student through the full program is approximately $2,000. The return, measured in earning potential over just the first year of employment, is roughly seven times that investment, a figure consistent with impact ROI models used by organizations like IDB Lab in evaluating workforce development programs in Latin America.

The Next Graduate Is Waiting

Recode the Future has proven its model. The demand for developers in Colombia keeps growing. The barrios keep producing talented young people with no clear path toward that opportunity.

Every dollar donated has a traceable destination: a meal that lets a student focus, a class session that builds a new skill, a computer that replaces a barrier, a graduate who enters the workforce and never looks back.