The story began 12 years ago with a student of English literature college whose passion was never in letters and grammar, but in technology and how it can enrich people’s lives, this boy was exploring his way into the world of technology and its biggest players, until he learned about Google, its story, founders, products, its philosophy and mission, our boy was hooked and enchanted by this mission, so he started to seek out ways to help this company achieve its mission, soon enough he found about a program called Google Student Ambassador or GSA, so he instantly applied and waited and waited and waited to receive an email that says that they rejected his application mainly because he is not in computer science college.
That news was so sad for him, but he did not lose hope, soon after he learned about another program called Google Technology Users Group or GTUG that was rebranded to Google Developer Group, so he instantly applied for this program and waited again for months to receive the email that changed his life, he was accepted to start a GDG chapter in his city in Algeria, GDG Chlef.
Now that he is close and connected to Google he was super excited to start working to improve the lives of his community by Google’s services, he started doing tech events, codelabs, and workshops for the people of his city and mainly students, till the day he decided to do a Map Party event where he invited university and high school students to come and participate and competition of adding places to his entire state, the students were from different schools from different parts of the state (Chlef), then they were splitted into groups and were given the same number of places to add, it was like a hackathon for adding places, after 4 hours of competition more than 100 places were added ranging from schools, medical centers, mosques.
This party was covered in local radio and was a major topic for weeks, then soon after he was called by the mayor to make it a bigger competition with more events happening simultaneously in different cities, and it was just that, after weeks of work and collaboration with local associations and clubs a movement started and was on for the entire year of 2014, resulting in hundreds of places added and the creation of a community of local guides were called Chlef Mappers.
That boy was extremely happy with the success he made with the help of his team and the support of Google, that always sponsored his events with fund, knowledge, content and encouragement, so he kept active on his community and Google kept encouraging him, until he was acknowledged as one of the most active GDG members and was rewarded to visit Google HQ and the Google IO event several times from 2013 to 2017.
After 12 years ago of activity and dedication to his community our boy is currently writing a part of his story with Google and Local Guides to inspire more people to believe in themselves and start exploring their ways of helping their communities and the world.
Ilyes Boudjelthia