Treehouse and KentuckianaWorks Expand Code Louisville

LOUISVILLE, Ky., Oct. 30, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- To expand Code Louisville and build the region's future technology workforce, Treehouse has teamed up with KentuckianaWorks to provide free coding education to a minimum of 850 individuals in 13 counties in Kentucky and southern Indiana through Treehouse's online learning platform. KentuckianaWorks and the Region10 Workforce Board will then place graduating Treehouse students in jobs with leading technology companies with the help of the Kentucky Career Centers and WorkOne in Indiana.

The expansion of Code Louisville marks one of the area's most aggressive workforce development programs, made possible through a $2.9 million Workforce Innovation Fund grant awarded to KentuckianaWorks by the U.S. Department of Labor to prepare ready-to-work Kentucky and Indiana residents with ready-to-be-filled jobs.

"By 2020, there will be one million more computer programming jobs in the U.S. than workers to fill them, and 10,400 of those jobs will be in the Louisville metro region. Initiatives like Code Louisville help to close the skills gap by preparing area residents with the skills needed to land high-paying, rewarding jobs more quickly," said Ryan Carson, co-founder and CEO of Treehouse. "We can take someone from no experience, to job-ready, to a rewarding career - all without a degree. The rules are all changing. You just don't need a Computer Science degree any more to get an amazing job in the tech industry."

Code Louisville will use Treehouse curricula to teach residents in-demand skills in Web and application development. KentuckianaWorks will sponsor and distribute more than 850 Treehouse online learning accounts to teach area residents technology such as Swift, HTML, CSS, JavaScript, PHP and Ruby. Students then will receive job placement assistance through the Kentucky Career Centers and WorkOne in Indiana.          

"We want Louisville to be known as a region where technological innovation happens. One of the things you need to make tech innovation happen is software developers--lots and lots of developers," said Michael Gritton, executive director of KentuckianaWorks. "Partnering with Treehouse to expand Code Louisville makes more computer programming education readily available to residents, which further strengthens our tech community by educating our next generation of developers."

Code Louisville aims to bolster the technology talent pipeline to help the region's growing software sector, and provide talent to all of the region's industries. Additionally, it supports Treehouse's national Code-to-Work initiative, which is designed to teach 150,000 people across the country how to code and then help them secure jobs in the technology industry.

For more information about Code Louisville visit http://www.codelouisville.org/. For more information about Treehouse's Code-to-Work initiative, visit http://code-to-work.org/.                    

About Treehouse

The Treehouse mission is to bring affordable technology education to people everywhere, in order to help them achieve their dreams and change the world. As members of the Treehouse community, students can learn to build websites, create iPhone and Android apps, build Web apps with Ruby on Rails and PHP, learn about user experience and how to start a business, and much more. Through 1000+ video tutorials, quizzes and code challenges created by expert teachers, students can learn to code in languages like Objective-C, HTML, CSS, PHP, Ruby, JavaScript and SQL. For more information, visit www.teamtreehouse.com.

About KentuckianaWorks

KentuckianaWorks, an agency of Louisville Metro Government, is the Workforce Investment Board for the Greater Louisville region consisting of Jefferson, Bullitt, Henry, Oldham, Spencer, Shelby and Trimble counties. Funding is primarily provided by the U.S. Department of Labor and the Workforce Investment Act of 1998, through the Kentucky Education Workforce Development Cabinet and Louisville Metro Government.

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SOURCE Treehouse

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