Code Blossom sets up in The Philippines
Marion, Co-Founder of Code Blossom traveled to The Philippines in January 2025 to set up an organization there to scale our impact and to foster local partnerships.
Why the Philippines?
After running pilots in several countries in 2024, we decided to focus on two main operating countries for 2025: The Philippines and Namibia.
The Philippines is one of the focus countries because while English-speaking skills (a requirement for the Code Blossom program) are widespread even among low-income communities, women often lack education opportunities and for starting their own careers. This is especially true for technology jobs.
Local organization “Code Empower”
In order to scale operations in any country, we need to have a local organization for several reasons, including hiring mentors, recruiting participants, and applying for local funding.
Marion, Co-Founder of Code Blossom, participated in an exchange program called “Hidden No More” in 2018 as part of the US State Department's International Visitor Leadership Program (IVLP). The program invited 50 women from 50 countries who were active in their local communities. As part of the exchange program, Marion met female leaders in major US organizations such as National Geographic, MIT,, and NASA. This is where Marion met Lites, her fellow participant from the Philippines.
After meeting in Switzerland in 2023, they decided to establish a collaboration around Code Blossom, upon which Lites introduced Marion to other important women in the Philippines’ tech communities, as well as women empowerment champions. This is how the founding team of “Code Empower” - the local non-profit sister organization of Code Blossom - came together.
The founders of Code Empower
Meet the founding members (from left to right): Imelda Canuel, MK Bertulfo, Lites Viloria, Jerald Laparan, and Marion Schleifer. All founders are either IVLP alumni or community leaders in the Philippines. Joining forces with these exceptional leaders will allow Code Blossom to tap into an already established network for participants recruiting, hiring partners, as well as funding opportunities.
Marion’s thoughts on the big opening event
In celebration of the new organization, we hosted an opening event in Manila for current Code Blossom participants from the Philippines, potential partners, and the Philippine government.
The event was an absolute success. For me, it was the kind of validation that had so far been missing for Code Blossom. We had been running our program successfully for over a year now, but since it had been mostly funded by us, we didn’t really know about the interest and investment of local communities and organizations. The event left me completely overwhelmed with the support that we received: The DICT (Department of Information and Communications Technology) wants to collaborate with us to extend our reach, local startups and tech companies showed interest in hiring our graduates, and the whole community was fascinated by our offer and wants to see more of it.
But for me personally, nothing was as special as meeting 7 of our Philippines participants in person. I’ve been deeply impressed by these women’s commitment to their learning journey despite facing challenges that I cannot even begin to imagine. I could also feel that this in-person meeting was an enormous confidence and motivation booster for all of them. Not only meeting with me but also meeting their fellow students and sharing their stories and challenges with each other, gave them a feeling of belonging that only fired up their ambition to continue their learning.
In the picture from left to right, are Code Blossom participants Maureen, Marge, Janice, (Marion), Desiree, Weng, Anjanette, and Glenda. It was amazing to meet them all in person after being in touch with them online for the past several months. Hearing their stories was fascinating to me, and gave me renewed energy to keep doing what we’re doing at Code Blossom.
I also had the opportunity to introduce Code Blossom to the whole community by delivering a talk about it. I hope that our message will spread even beyond this opening event and that the connections we established there will lead to fruitful and productive collaborations that will help us increase our reach in the Philippines.
I want to say thank you to everyone who helped organize this fantastic event and to everyone who joined to hear female leaders speak about their projects and dreams. I will be back soon, and hopefully the next event will host even more Code Blossom participants who will share their stories to inspire others.
What’s next
Code Blossom is currently fundraising for “Project 60 - Philippines” which seeks to onboard 60 more women from the Philippines to the Code Blossom program to get them educated as software developers. We’re passionate about our mission and we’re excited to have reached the milestone of establishing a local organization in the Philippines. This will now enable us to start scaling our impact.
Find out more about the projects we are currently fundraising for here.
