Dear AC family,
The spread of COVID-19 has surely impacted every one of us. Hundreds of millions of people around the world are quarantined or working from home; Millions and soon to be tens of millions of people have lost their jobs globally. Although Taiwan has been less affected at this point, it's certainly a time of great stress and uncertainty.
At this difficult time, I am especially grateful for the community at ALPHA Camp.
At ALPHA Camp, our mission is to empower people to develop meaningful and rewarding careers through lifelong learning. Our success is built upon the hard work and participation of our students, instructors, teaching assistants, corporate partners, and AC’s core team. In order to better support the AC community a this critical time, we have decided to take the following key actions:
1. If you have been affected by COVID-19
We are here for you. Please contact us immediately.
At AC, we help our students and alumni in career planning and job searching every day. The following are the services and resources we can provide immediately:
- Strong corporate network: most of our corporate partners are in the software and network industries, and they continue to seek talent, and we are happy to help introduce.
- Career Consultation: We regularly organize career consultation workshops, and group sharings on job search and interview experiences. We are happy to invite you to participate.
- Career Exploration: In addition to courses teaching technical programming skills, we have also developed a series of content about career exploration and how to find the most suitable for your work.
If you think these resources are helpful to you, or just need someone to chat, come talk to us via taiwan@alphacamp.co. We're here with you to find your path forward.
2. If you are looking for ways to contribute
If you think your own experience and connections can help those affected, I sincerely invite you to come forward and help the community!
We hope to invite everyone to share their experiences and resources with the community in different ways. Just like the "community learning" experience designed in our course, I hope you will not only learn from me or the AC team, but will make the entire community your mentor and partner.
The following are some of our current preliminary ideas, if
- Your employer or a known business is recruiting technical talent
- You have skills / professional experiences and are willing to share with the community
- You have ideas or experiences on "how to learn effectively online"
Please fill out this Help The Community form. We will design follow-up mechanisms and activities for everyone to participate in.
3. How can AC do more?
In addition to taking care of the AC community, we are also actively looking for other ways to contribute to society.
- For industries most affected by the epidemic, such as tourism and retail, we are exploring the possibility of cooperation, such as working with related industry associations to provide basic programming training to affected employees for free. So that they can learn to make time more fulfilling, and even get government subsidies.
- We are discussing with several industry leaders, hoping to produce new teaching content to help companies or talents accelerate the digital transformation.
- We are planning to work with educational institutions to provide educators with "how to make effective online learning" training. As a new venture focused on online education, we understand that the digital gap does exist, so we hope that by sharing our own experience with more people, more educators can see the possibility of online education.
If you are in these industries and have some ideas about how AC can help you, please contact us at taiwan@alphacamp.co.
4. We are always here!
Thank you for being part of this valuable community. We are very grateful to have all the outstanding students, alumni, teaching assistants, partners, and the teams who are committed to helping students achieve their learning outcomes.
At such a chaotic and difficult time, the road ahead may not be clear, but with support and help from each other, we will eventually survive this crisis with a better look. If you are our student alumni, remember that you can contact me, the AC team, and your fellow alumni in the community. We also look forward to hearing your updates.
Please stay safe, and we shall get through the crisis, together.
Sincerely,
Bernard Chan
Founder & CEO, ALPHA Camp