Amira Kefi, PhD at the BioEngineering Department at UIC, is now running a community service project to improve education for juveniles in Cook County Detention Center by teaching them how to code and analyze data. This program will introduce them to data science and will direct them towards a healthy life by helping them making better decisions for their future education. Due to the COVID-19 restrictions, Amira is not able to go to the center anymore and access their resources. Also, the juvenile resources there are very poor and restricted.

Therefore, Amira is hoping to raise $5,000 to buy ten laptops in order to be able to install the needed programs and tools and send them to the youths in the detention center. This fund will make the juveniles in detention very happy and is going to be very important to their learning process to practice writing and running of their own code during the lessons she will be teaching them through Zoom sessions. At the end of this program, those laptops will be donated to the Cook County Detention Center in order to make more juveniles happy.

Each year family, friends, and the community come together to support Schweitzer Fellows as they begin to implement innovative public service projects in Chicago’s most vulnerable communities. Our 2020-21 Fellows have created online “wish lists” of supplies and resources that will help them realize their service project goals.