At the start of the 2022-2023 school year, many new morning clubs were founded, each highlighting a variety of interests amongst BCA students. One of BCA’s newest morning clubs, Code for Charity, appeals to those who enjoy both coding and helping others. David Lee, a junior in ATCS, is the president and founder of the club. Recently, he sat for an interview with the Academy Chronicle to discuss his new club.

AC: What is the purpose of Code for Charity?

DL: Code for Charity aims to develop websites and technologies for nonprofits and charities that struggle in those areas. We provide our services for free to them.

AC: What inspired you to start this club?

DL: I always knew I wanted to start a club at BCA, but what inspired me particularly was that, in computer science, there are a lot of things you can do. My mom works really heavily in nonprofits and charities, so we kind of came up with the idea together. It kind of just worked perfectly.

AC: What is the club currently doing?

DL: We are still a new club because we were only founded two months ago. Right now, we’re coding four websites. We’re coding the Student Advocacy Union website, we’re coding the Spectrum club website, and we’re coding the Upstanders website.

We’re also coding for the beginners in our club who don’t really know how to code. Some of my friends are actually leading the project. They’re just making our own club website. Those are the four projects we’re working on now, and we’re actually in contact with a non-profit right now to do a website with them.

AC: What are some short-term goals for the club?

DL: Some short-term goals for the club right now are to successfully complete all four of the websites. Then, I want to build a nice portfolio of the websites so we can show the nonprofits and charities that we know what we’re doing even though we’re high school students. Hopefully, they’ll put a little more trust in our website development skills.

AC: What are some long-term goals for the club?

DL: Some long-term goals, like really long term, we’re looking to become a non-profit organization ourselves. So hopefully in the long run, maybe six months to a year from now, we’ll be a 501(c)(3) nonprofit instead of just operating under BCA.

AC: What do you hope to achieve with this club?

DL: This is more than just something to put on my resume because it’s more of something that I’m really passionate about. I really enjoy coding a lot and leading projects, so I hope to get out of it that I can actually help other people. If you look online, to create websites and to have people develop websites for you, costs thousands of dollars, so we want to provide our services for free. As I said, there is a charity that we’re in talks with now. They basically provide free education to lower-income and disabled children so even helping them, just for free, it’s actually a blessing. Most of all, it’s nice to help out and do that for free.

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A special thank you to David Lee for taking the time to meet with the Academy Chronicle. Having only been active for two months, but already working on so much, we can be sure to see lots of great things from Code for Charity. It meets Monday mornings in room 136 and is open to everyone, whether they have coding experience or not.