Dear Mr and Mrs Preston-Werner,

My name is Grace Uwi from South Africa, I'm writing this letter as an expression of my gratitude for the Macbook air laptop that I received with the help of the HACKCLUB and the amazing and most helpful Theo who supported me through the process. Words alone can not describe how Grateful I am to have been the lucky beneficiary.  I'm originally from DRC , I stay In South africa as a refugee, where I come from , Computers firstly are a very expensive luxury and not everyone can afford them. Because of that , it is very close to impossible for us as Children to have a passion for computers or to study computer science. I became very interested when I went to high school and took IT as a subject, they don't teach much in those classes but with the help of youtube and Google, I got to learn more about it and it's been my dream ever since to study computer science and hopefully be able to study further and became a Software engineer.. This laptop is my ticket to becoming my dreams, I'm sooo happy and extremely grateful for this opportunity.  With this laptop , I'll be able to learn compute computer languages, create websites, and develop my coding knowledge. It is a dream come true, with this laptop I'll be able to apply for a scholarship to go and study Computer Science in America. Its extremely hard to do so in africa with the limitations of me being a refugee and ofcourse because of my financial disabilities.  I Pray that God continues blessing you for your generosity, there's alot of kids like me who's got dreams and who looks up to amazing people like you but can not reach them.

Remain Blessed
Grace Uwi

Grace Uwi

To Tom & Theresa,

First of all, thank you so much for the MacBook, we Adrian (the oldest one), Enzo (the middle one), and Victor (the youngest one) are so happy for having this opportunity of getting a tool that will allow us to work on our future. Receiving the news we would get a new laptop was amazing, because we were looking for used laptops on the internet. And also, the experience of unboxing something brand new is just priceless.

Thank you,
Adrian, Enzo, and Victor Lobo


Adrian Lobo

Dear Tom & Theresa,

Thank you for providing me a laptop. It has been very nice to have a Macbook air. Especially in this day and age with COVID-19 and social distancing limiting what we are all able to do. I have been amazed at the capabilities of this laptop. being my first apple product, the change to Macos was easier than I thought it would be.

I hope you guys are doing well during this difficult time. Thank you again for all you have done.

Sheldon Leroy Whitten


Sheldon Whitten

Dear Mr. Tom and Dr. Theresa Preston-Werner,

I hope this message finds you both well and in good health, sir and madam. This is Ruth Ogbemudia and I am a rising high school senior and developer from Long Island, NY. First off, I wanted to thank you both for the MacBook Air and the USB dongle; I truly do value the time and effort you both dedicate to making this world more equitable, especially within the realms of not only social justice, but technology as well.  I acknowledge that I just so happen to be one of many beneficiaries of this grand mission—and I am very proud of that!

Before I received your technology grant, my technological situation was less than ideal. In fact, I used ACER 2008 22inch monitor with over 10 years worth of information saved on it. Not only was it slow, I had to share it with 3 other people in my household. So, it's safe to say that I was overjoyed when the Hack Club sent me the notification that I had won; I could not have imagined that joining a slack group for coding help would afford me this opportunity. 

Currently, I use the laptop not only for coding but work as well. I have an internship at the RRIPG or Rugby Research and Injury Prevention Group at which I do data entry and work as a data analyst. In terms of coding, I am pursuing a project that combines my passion for both machine learning and medicine. In particular, I quantified the inherent risk of frequently encountered injuries in professional soccer.

Overall, the runtime of my code is much faster; tasks that usually took me 3 weeks to do I now complete within the span of one. I was even able to participate in an MIT summer program, called MOSTEC, in which I was planning to relinquish my spot months earlier. But more importantly, the laptop has also given me the ability to attend school remotely. This is important to me because I serve as a caregiver for my little sister and giving her my undivided attention, whether her elementary school is remote or not, holds a lot of weight for me.

Thank you again for giving me, arguably, the opportunity of a lifetime.

Sincerely yours,
Ruth Ogbemudia 
Osaiyekemwen.o@gmail.com

Osaiyekemwen Ogbemudia

Dear Mr & Mrs. Preston-Werner,

Thank you for donating Macbook Airs to the Hack Club community. I am, along with everyone else that got one, are grateful and thankful for your gracious donation to the Hack Club community. My new Mac has allowed me to bounce back into the massive backlog of work I had for some of the organizations I was working with, and it's got a lot of my work done, as well as allowing me to discover a new OS (a lot nicer than Windows, in my opinion). It's hard to put in words to how much this means to me, but your donation has opened up new opportunities to many people.

Thank you,
Aditya Rawat

Aditya Rawat

Thank you Tom & Theresa

 for giving me the MacBook Air . I was struggling without a lap for coding .I used to watch many coding courses online and for me it was not able to practice .you made that possible for .I would like to build a code together platform online which allows our hack club members to code at one platform . All this will happen because of you .Thanks a lot .May god bless you .

Bezlin Johnson

Dear Tom & Theresa Preston-Werner,

I'm Thejaswi, junior year electronics and communication engineering student from Kerala. I'm also passionate about hardware, designing and coding.

I'm currently working on an AI-based autonomous carrier project 'Auxy' and in the meantime, I work for Hack Club India as a content and social media manager.

I do not have enough words to describe how grateful I'm for this wonderful laptop. I'm absolutely in love with this machine. I used to have an old i3 hp device which had lagging issues and was really difficult for me to get my job done. This computer will surely allow me to catch up on my project works and help me progress. I can now finally work on developing designing skills with this MacBook. This is undoubtedly the best thing that has happened to me this year so far. Once again thank you from the bottom of my heart for this generous gift.

Sincerely,
Thejaswi.

Thejaswi P

It's my first laptop and it makes me feel so excited. I would like to use it to learn various coding languages and also improve myself in coding.
I'm really Thankful to Hackclub , Tom and Theresa. I would also like to Thank you Sir. Thanks for all the support !!!  

Ashwin Prakash

Dear Tom & Theresa,

It’s really hard for me to put this into words. I would like to give you my sincere gratitude for your immense generosity for this amazing hardware – a MacBook Air to 41 deserving Hack Clubbers around the globe, who were in a great need of decent hardware to build upon. I am really fortunate to be one of the recipients of the MacBook Air Grant. I have some amazing project plans in the pipeline for this new device, one of the major things will be scratching the surface of IOS development for sure! I will definitely revert back to the community with some amazing piece of code.

A little about myself, I am currently in my final year in computer science major. I have tweaked and built around a lot, though most of my coding projects I didn't made live on the web ( fear of people might not like it, saying it’s too basic ) though I am being more comfortable with open source communities now, all thanks to Hack Club. Currently, I am working on a command-line utility for Hack Club event registrations like an npm package, it will be really cool and fun way because all the attendees have to do is npx 'package-name' and reply to an automated mail to get the process done.

A huge thanks to the Hack Club staff team as well to make this entire process, from selection to logistics super smooth, a personal thank to Theo (@tmb) of course, I am sure it must have been tiring.

At last, I would like to say that, as you have given away these 41 MacBook Air’s at your 41st Birthday - May your life span crosses the one of Aldabra Giant Tortoise. 

Keep hacking and inspiring others!

Best,
Anurag Singh
Lead, Hack Club NMIT
Bangalore - India

Anurag Singh

Mansi is still writing her letter — it'll be updated here once she's done :)

Mansi Negi

Hey Mr. and Mrs. Preston-Werner!
	 
	First of all, I can’t believe I was lucky enough to get this opportunity to receive a free MacBook Air and am SO GRATEFUL! Especially from THE Tom and Theresa Preston-Werner, literal ICONS in the Computer Science industry! This laptop will truly change my life and I’m not even exaggerating. My name is Siya Sachdeva and I’m going into my junior year of high school this fall in Ellington, Connecticut! I was introduced to this amazing opportunity through Hack Club, the organization which my friend and I decided to incorporate into the Computer Science Club we started for the first time at our high school during our sophomore year. I’ve always had a deep love for computers and am specifically interested in the Cyber Security branch of Computer Science. Outside of school, I love to participate in Hackathons and help my community using computing innovations! One of my favorite projects that I worked on with a group of friends was creating a chatbot linked to a FaceBook page we called iConneCT. The chatbot allows the users to connect with social justice projects and communities that fit their interests. This was a huge project for me and my group that we worked with Infosys to create because it allowed us to be more interactive with our community and connect the people of Connecticut! Because of you guys, I now have an opportunity to do so many more things like iConneCT online that I wouldn’t be able to do without this computer and I would like to thank you for this wonderful opportunity. I had big plans for the summer of 2020 and one of those plans was to learn a new computing language. I’m super excited to use this computer to not only improve on old skills but also learn new ones! Once again, I am beyond thankful for this amazing opportunity that you have provided me and others like me with! 

With thanks and appreciation, 
Siya Sachdeva 


Siya Sachdeva


Dear Tom & Theresa,

I hope you and your family are doing well and safe during this global pandemic!

Thank you very much for gifting me this MacBook Air. It means a lot to me!

I'm a third-year engineering graduate student at CUCEK Kerala, India. I'm the Club Lead of Hack Club in my college. Also, I'm working as an intern at MakerGram, where we are building a platform for makers and hardware enthusiasts. I'm also heading various development communities inside and outside of my college.

I'm passionate and enthusiastic about learning and making hardware-based solutions. On the programming side, I like Python the most. The simplicity and expressibility are the key factors which made me fall for it! As a requirement of one project, I'm also learning ReactJS and NodeJS now.

I'm a person who likes to do projects. I believe doing is the best way to learn something new. I have done Google Chrome Duino Game Automation project by using Arduino and Python. It was an exciting experience for me! I built an IoT water monitoring system and a smart helmet for bike riders recently. Currently, I'm in the work of developing an interactive game with wearable devices for children to ease their tremor therapy.

I needed a powerful computer which can handle the loads which is necessary for completing my projects and learning timely. Your gift is at the correct time! I'm sure that it will empower me to do and explore more in the deep horizon of the technological heaven! Thank you very much for considering me for this gift!

With Gratitude,

Rafi Rasheed
Student CUCEK,
Intern at MakerGram.
https://rafirasheed.co


Rafi Rasheed T C

Hi Tom and Theresa,

I’m Dina Elhanan, an 18-year old hacker, and club leader at Hack Club. I started a Hack Club chapter at my school at the start of junior year. I contribute code from time to time on my Github and I'm really interested in cyber security and politics (I'm currently hacking on Tumblr!) I wanted to thank you for providing laptops to students like myself. My laptop recently got damaged and it's been a great help having the Macbook. I know your donation is inspiring and enabling Hack Club students like myself to do cool things in tech.

Thank you,
Dina

Dina Elhanan

Hi,

My name is Wambiru Christine a student at Machakos university, Nairobi Kenya and a member of hack club Kenya. I am someone who is really invested in learning technology and using it to better my country and continent. In technology, I am more focused on cyber security which is a really huge passion of mine. I am very lucky to have had a chance to participate and win the MacBook air laptop.

I personally received it yesterday and I must say it has got me so excited. I will use this new laptop to better my skills and knowledge in cyber security. I am involved in various community initiatives and this laptop will help me successfully assist in these initiatives in many ways such as creating curriculums, conducting an e-bootcamp session and share my knowledge among other things. It will also allow me to learn and understand the iOS architecture and how to troubleshoot it in case you run into an error.

I would like to take this opportunity and thank you so much for this new technology in my hands. I will use it to better my skill set and build my community. I am really thankful.

Kind regards,
Wambiru Christine

Christine Wambiru

Hello Tom, Theresa, 

My name is Temilayo Subair I’m a student in Nigeria I want to say thank you for this wonderful MacBook Air gift. 

With this laptop, I would continue to build solutions like gave always done and also be able to build ios related applications using React Native and other tools. I’m aspiring to be a full-stack engineer by the time I’m done with my university degree and also empower my fellow peers in schools on various platforms and tools to be able to be a successful software engineer.

Once again I say thanks to the Hack club community for welcoming me to the community.

Finally, May Almighty God continue to shower his blessing on you and your family and your business.

Thanks for this wonderful gift :)

Temilayo Subair

Temilayo  Subair

Dear Tom and Theresa,

I am Doreen Mwape from Zambia aged 18, currently doing computer science with education at Evelyn hone college and a club lead there as well. I love to code because it makes me feel like I have super powers and adds value to my life.

As seen from the picture attached you have brought a big smile on my face ,I really don't know how to thank you for the Mac book you sent. As a you  in zambia it almost seemed impossible for me to acquire a Mac book but you made it possible.

My favorite projects to work on are mostly web based projects I currently do front-end and also learning some back end. 

One reason I really wanted a Mac book was because we are currently experiencing long hours of load shedding and a mac book power house will save me from that. And also I want to teach my club and children in my neighborhood how to develop games on Mac using scratch,I got this inspiration from an article I read though am not that much into gaming but I feel it will be a fun way to introduce gaming to kids.

With love and thanks from Doreen

Doreen Mwape

Hey!


My name is Adriano, I am a 16 years old student, and I want to thank you so much for my brand new laptop! Before having it, I was facing a lot of issues because I did not have a laptop and my desktop computer was really old...


I use my computer for some coding activites, like hackathons for example, and in these hackathons I got a lot of development experience, and developed some apps, as I describe below:


- Sula: My most recent hackathon, when my team and I created a social media app for truckers, so they can express their opinions, and we can bring that to government or even atract investors so we can make the trucker’s life better!


- Ecovest: Also an app created in a hackathon created to help brazilians to economize and invest money, since the most part of brazilians does not even have an emergency reserve, so I created with a team, a game app where people can win rewards if they learn how to manage their money.


I also love open source and I make contributions when I can and I already won with my team, some local and state robotics contests. Feel free to see what I am working on (https://github.com/adrianoapj)


So, yeah, my new laptop is going to help a lot, and I am sure I will be even more productive in my projects! :)


Thank you again,
Adriano Pereira Junior

Adriano Pereira Junior

Dear Mr. Tom Preston- Werner and Mrs. Theresa Preston-Werner,

THANK YOU SO MUCH!!!!!! I truly appreciate the new Macbook Air that I have received through HackClub! And am very grateful to you both! I could not have asked for a better birthday gift as my birthday is coming up in 12 days (August 12th). You guys are truly angels with a golden heart!

I am very excited to use my first laptop for many upcoming projects. I recently participated in a Virtual Internship at the Game2Learn Lab at NC State University and worked on creating several computing-infused programs that teachers can incorporate into their school curriculum to allow students to interact with a computer program to learn subject-related content. Furthermore, students are encouraged to interact with the code involved in the program as all of the programs were created in a block-based environment. Therefore, students can modify buggy code, solve parson’s problems, and add their own custom extensions to their programs. 

After participating in this internship program, I am planning on collaborating with teachers at my school to work with them to infuse block-based programming in their school lessons and curriculum. Therefore, I am again very grateful to you both for giving me this laptop so that I can help infuse programming in school lessons to introduce other students to programming. 

Furthermore, I aim to use this laptop to broaden my programming skills. I grew up on the island of St. Thomas in the US Virgin Islands, at my school or in extracurricular activities students were rarely exposed to programming or computer science. After moving to North Carolina to seek greater educational opportunities, I was immediately introduced to computer programming and computer science through various computer programming camps at NC State University and other programs such as ChickTech that were not available in the USVI. Ater finally discovering the wonders of programming, I aim to not only create block-based programs to infuse in school curriculum so that other students can also discover the wonders of programming, but also aim to further my programming skills by learning Python in order to learn more about data science, artificial intelligence, and machine learning.

Lastly, I aim to pursue biomedical engineering in college. This laptop will help me gain necessary programming, computer science, and engineering skills to become a better problem solver to help those in need and improve the health care system through biomedical engineering by creating technological developments to aid the human body. As a rising senior in high school, this laptop will be immensely useful to begin my journey in college as it will help me complete college applications and apply for scholarships.

I am and will always be thankful to you both for this laptop! You all have no idea how useful it will be to me. I previously used to walk to the local library to complete school work on the computer there, or would complete school work during my lunch time at the school library. Although I was able to borrow a laptop from the school for remote learning, which was also helpful for my virtual internship, I am very, very, very grateful for your kindness by giving me this laptop!! You have no idea how much knowledge I can gain through this laptop; it has broadened the opportunities available to me in order to grow in life!

A BIG thank you once again,
Syna Sharma

My parents also THANK YOU for understanding and helping us during these times. And, they are very grateful to you for this laptop.


Syna Sharma

Dear Mr. Tom and Mrs. Theresa,

I hope this letter finds you well and safe.
Thank you so much for sending me a new Macbook Air! I really appreciate the effort and time you had spent choosing the students with the most potential and need then shipping each of them out with this new, great laptop; I am even much happier that I was identified as one of those students with a great potential.

Actually, I’m so excited that I got this laptop: to be honest, this tool would help me so much through working towards my short-and-long-term goals. I have been studying at a STEM project-based high school, where students are supposed to build a project each semester that aims to solve one or more of Egypt’s grand challenges. I graduated from this STEM school less than a month ago, and I am so proud that I was able to build more than 5 different projects during my three years at the school, and most of them I implemented using Computer-Science. I am so passionate about entrepreneurship as well, and I always try to mix between those two fields whenever I build a project.

The project I am currently working on is a startup – called MeData – that aims to eliminate diagnostic errors all over Egypt through a mobile application which serves as a medical database for patients and connects them with doctors all over the country. I am currently enhancing my mobile app development skills and taking some online courses for entrepreneurship. Plus, I will be studying Computer-Science at the university, and I will need the laptop you sent me to study, do the assignments and presentations, and more interestingly build more projects. Furthermore, as a Hack Club Leader in my country, I will be working towards making Hack Club reach more schools in Egypt during the next school-year, which is one of my goals; Hack Club is one of the best experiences that ever happened to me and without it, I would not have known so much about myself. That’s why I want more students to join Hack Club and make the most out of that great experience. So, this laptop will be the common helping factor while I go through all these journeys and walk towards my goals.

Once again, thank you for giving me this opportunity which I could never have anywhere else, and I hope I work up to your expectations.

Finally, I am attaching the poem I have written to congratulate Mr. Tom for his 41st birthday in the next page, and I am so glad that he said he liked it (and said it sounded like rap!) when he first saw it.

Thank you!

Sincerely,
Ali Tarek


“Happy 41st birthday from Hack Club.
This is my story so prepare your coffee cup.
I became an artist one day.
I did not sing, nor did I perform ballet.
I just learnt to code, not so simple, okay?
On my laptop’s screen unfamiliar words I display.
On my laptop’s desk there is a rubber duck.
I keep talkin’ to it whenever I’m feelin’ stuck.
I code, run, and debug every day.
Sometimes I use variables, sometimes an array.
Did you like the dark mode when writing your code?
I think I do, but I’d prefer it grey.”

Ali Tarek

Gina put together a really fantastic letter with a few pictures in Google Docs, here's the link: https://docs.google.com/document/d/11NamnsDSSI5gQG0_OmPUxr7SCzWQfmKSLct58FFn3X0/edit

Gina Choi

Dear Tom & Theresa Preston-Warner,

Thank you so much for supporting me, I'm really excited to start making things with my laptop! (actually I've already started).

My name's Sam, I've just turned 15, I'm about to start Grade 10 and I'm originally from Australia but my family migrated to Singapore when I was 8 (it still shocks me that I have already spent half my life in Singapore, Singapore is really cool but that's a whole other topic). A few things I enjoy are: science, coding, history, math and mix of random things related to humanities.

At the moment I'm working on building a contact tracing system to help contact tracers in pandemics. I'm also hoping to learn ReactJS and Next.js, so far I've built the tic-tac-toe starter game, my aim for the end of the summer is to make a functional site using one of the two frameworks (depends which one I like more) from scratch. My current plan is to do a Summer of Making (a super cool program I'm organising with Hack Club) wrap up site using data from multiple sources to create graphs and big display numbers etc. Outside of coding, I'm working with a Grade 12 student at my school to make a documentary about the COVID-19 situation in Singapore and how it has effected Foreign Domestic Workers. I plan to use the laptop to edit the documentary! I'll be getting up to all sorts of things this summer and sharing them (plus photos of my adventures in Singapore) in my scrapbook: https://scrapbook.hackclub.com/sampoder!

Once again, thank you! In my opinion english doesn't have enough ways to say thank you, but I am extremely grateful for this opportunity you have given me!

- Sam

Sam Poder

Greetings dear Tom and Theresa Preston,

My name is Richard Opiyo from Kenya, a Hack Club member here in Kenya. I am super excited to receive this MacBook Air from you and I greatly appreciate it.
With this Mac I'll be able to conveniently work on the hardware projects that I’ve been involved with so far - like the simple ventilator project. I am looking forward to explore more projects thanks to this new empowerment.

Kind regards,
Richard Opiyo

Richard Opiyo

Hello! I'm a rising senior in Los Angeles, California. 

I program primarily in Python, and I use it to build scientific programming projects. My passion project is a simulator of an ideal quantum computer (I have been working on it for around four years) that I am currently expanding upon. Thank you so much for the Macbook Air! I'll be able to use it for so many different projects. My prior system had very little memory, so often to start a new project I had to delete old applications so that there was space for the new ones. I won't have that issue anymore! I'm excited to get programming.

Thank you :)

Heather Young

Hey Tom & Theresa,
 
Thank you sooo much for sponsoring the MacBook Air for me. A few weeks ago I got an email from Theo saying that I had won the MacBook Air grant. And I got this mail a few days after the WWDC when I was flaunting over all the development features in Xcode and Swift that Apple was showing even though I knew I could never afford a Mac. I’m going off to college in a few months and was afraid of whether I had to use my old laptop there. I cried a bit after reading the mail because I was extremely happy as I had been using a 10-year-old Toshiba laptop, an iPhone 5s (codepen.io), and the school’s old XP PC with CRT Monitors for programming. 
 
Right now I’m studying Flutter to build a social media mobile app and using a Mac will definitely help for the iOS simulations. Some of the mobile apps I previously made include a Magic 8 ball app, an adventure game, a BMI calculator, a Weather app, etc. 
 
Thank you so much for giving us all this opportunity. No words can describe how grateful and thankful I am for your support and help. Everything that I develop using this laptop, you and hack club is the only reason behind it.
 
 
Thanking you again for your thoughtfulness, your kindness, and your generous heart.
 
Regards from me and my entire family 
~aeden


Aeden Thomas

Hi Mr and Mrs Preston-Werner,

My name is Ng Jun Yen but I usually go by my initials JY and I am a recipient of one of your laptop grants. I am a Malaysian-Chinese high schooler residing in Melbourne, Australia, and since I was 12 I have been fascinated by computers and programming, first getting my start making games in Unity. I eventually moved on from making games to pursuing web development with some more entrepreneurial ventures like building a since defunct game-related ecommerce site from scratch, from which I was able to not only expand on my programming abilities but to also learn about marketing, customer outreach, and product design.

While I was lucky enough to have access to a computer at home from a young age they were often rather old which reduced my ability to ship. Getting this laptop has resulted in a massive change to my development work and I am no longer held back by my system to make awesome stuff! It has not only changed the way I do things but has also unlocked new opportunities for me.

I am currently in contact with the Arweave team (arweave.org) hoping to build a native Dropbox-like client for permanent/pay-once-keep-forever storage needs. I am very excited for this project and this would never have been possible without your grant which allows me to now build applications for MacOS and other OSs!

Thank you Mr and Mrs Preston-Werner for this grant, for improving my experience with a hobby that I am passionate about, and for enabling me to pursue new ventures. ♥️♥️♥️

Sincerely,
Jun Yen (JY)

Ng Jun Yen

Dear Tom and Theresa,

Thank you SO much for donating MacBooks to Hack Club and especially for providing me with one. It truly means a lot. 

My name is Fatima and I’m a rising high school senior! I had my first real hands-on experience with coding through a camp called Kode with Klossy. In the last week, my group and I coded a website centered around the Black Lives Matter movement. The website included resources for petitions, legislation, donations, and more! It’s my favorite project and really inspired me to pursue Data Science in the near future.

However, technology was a huge barrier for me. It was demotivating because I couldn’t do much with my old laptop. Fortunately, having this MacBook is going to allow me to start so many projects! Learning Python (for data analysis), creating my personal website, using GitHub, starting internships, preparing for college, and more! There’s so much I want to do to further my skills and I can finally do it now!

You can’t understand how grateful I am for this opportunity. I’ll forever be thankful for this MacBook! It’s the first time ever that I own a laptop that isn’t handed down from someone else. Opportunities like these inspire so many students to chase their dreams by getting rid of their barriers. And I’m so ecstatic to be one of them. Thank you very, very, much for providing me a MacBook Tom and Theresa!!

From,
Fatima Camara 


Fatima Camara

Dear Mr. and Mrs. Tom & Theresa Preston-Werner, 

My name is Madeleine, I am going into my junior year of high school in a small town in Connecticut. 

Firstly I wanted to start off by saying how thankful and ecstatic I am to be receiving this amazing computer. Thank you so much for helping Hack Club give me the opportunity to do so. 

When I was a freshman in high school is when I finally took my first real computer science class and I instantly was intrigued. I learned so much, and spent lots of time diving into resources I had available to me in order to learn more. I have come so far since the beginning of my journey, since freshman year I have started the first two computer science clubs at my highschool, have placed nationally and locally in cybersecurity subject tests and competitions, and am planning on hosting a] Code Day in the coming year (pending the pandemic). I am so excited to continue to grow with a computer that will be able to run different and more beneficial resources to implement what I have learned, and help me continue to learn about my passion!

 My favorite project I have completed so far was made at my first hackathon (Teen Hacks Long Island), my group and I used JavaScript to create an app that brought awareness to ocean pollution and the impacts it is having on wildlife. We created a bunch of mini games, I coded somewhat of a “chatbot”, as well as lots of informational pages and even a website using HTML!

My biggest interest and hobbies right now revolve around computer science. I enjoy programming social good applications/websites using JavaScript and HTML, as well as continuing to learn Java and Python. I am really interested in cybersecurity. Recently I have been learning more about SQL injection, linux, networks, and I can not wait to download a virtual machine on my new computer!

I have recently been doing lots of research and projects on the technology gender gap, and even had the chance to testify at my state capital for Girls Who Code on a bill that would help bring more computer science education to Connecticut. Grants, and people who support projects like this, are so important to have. Being able to have a computer that I can use to further my education will help me so much in building knowledge and skills entering into the computer science field. 

Therefore, I can not put into words how thankful I am, and I hope you know how important and impactful this has been for me. 

Thank you for everything, 
Madeleine


Madeleine Willett

Dear Tom and Theresa,

My name is Obrey Muchena Jr from Zambia, I am 18 years of age and a senior in high school. I am a very enthusiastic student and I think this is a strong point of mine. my favourite subjects are Literature, Biology, Physics and Math. My friends say I am a very funny and Interesting boy with a very good sense of humour. As soon as I meet a new person who are happy to meet me, I feel extremely comfortable With them.

Most of my hobbies are coding, reading book, playing games, watching movies, listening to music and especially Building projects. I am very passionate about technology specifically robotics and so far we have built 2 humanoid robots With my friend that can make movements, blink Leds and give back to back voice interaction with human. I’m writting this letter to you with excitement to say Thank you! for the laptop you gave me as a gift. It is perfect and will take me a long way.

I am currently using it in programming the third robot we are developing with my friend, and I am planning to learn web development and sharpen up my coding skills in c++,python and Java  Which will widen my portfolio. People like you who support all my efforts to grow and develop my skills really encourages and motivates me to always work hard and never give up on my dreams. I cannot thank you enough for giving me a leg up in starting this new phase in my life :)

Thank you! 
Obrey

Obrey Muchena

Dear Tom & Theresa,



I hope you are both staying safe during these times. My name is Maya Dummett and I’m a high school junior from northern New Jersey. I’m writing to thank you for all that you have done for me. For as long as I can remember, I have wanted to learn how to code but there were always barriers that I found impossible to break. That is until now.  For one, I did not see myself reflected in STEM. So for a long time, I settled with the humanities. But once the COVID-19 pandemic caused school closures, the world became a lot quieter and so did every discouraging thought of mine.



I told myself that I could be the representation that I wanted to see because I had all the time in the world and so, my journey began. I scanned the internet for resources to learn to code. I applied to Kode with Klossy and Girls Who Code and managed to secure spots. I even signed up for my first computer science course with nothing but determination in my heart. Soon after, I found I lacked the technology to sustain my newfound passion. It was disheartening in every way. I spent time moving toward fully understanding the principles of HTML, CSS, and JS, only to uncover my technology’s inability to host certain software or run my code at all. At that point, I had built confidence in myself and my skills to pursue STEM and here was yet another glaring barrier. I felt like every odd was stacked against me. Little did I know that I would be presented with this incredible opportunity.



I say all of that to highlight just how meaningful this new technology is to me. Truly, there are not nearly enough words to express my gratitude. Your kindness does not go unappreciated at all. As much as I love coding, I have the same amount of love for my humanities. As a lover of humanities, I naturally gravitate to political activism and social justice, notably social equity and climate justice. I am beyond excited to combine my interests with coding and uplift these causes in the best way that I can. Currently, I am coding a civic engagement website and I’m looking forward to moving beyond it soon. But all of this and what is to come for me was only possible through your collective kindness. So, thank you for providing me with the key to change the world. I am forever grateful.



With great thanks,

Maya Dummett

Tom & Theresa—

Thank you so, so much for your generous gift to Hack Club students. We're thankful for your support in helping us build the next generation of technical leaders. We thought it'd be best if they could thank you themselves.