BROWNSVILLE, TX – A partnership between the Brownsville Community Improvement Corporation (BCIC), Cameron County Education Initiative (CCEI), Workforce Solutions Cameron, Augusta Hitech, and SoliSYSTEMS is paving the way for entrepreneurs and small businesses to engage in mobile app development. The grant funded program provides training in Flutter, Google’s open source technology for creating mobile, desktop, and web apps with a single codebase.
“CCEI is proud to partner with BCIC and our industry partners on this matching grant opportunity,” stated Rita Hernandez, President of CCEI. “We will be recruiting 15 students for this project who will create a working APP for a local nonprofit organization or possibly industry partner.”
CCEI is committed to increasing the earning capacity of families in Brownsville through zero debt career training in high demand careers and emerging industries. IT careers and remote work is on the rise, and this project is aimed at ensuring community members are ready for those opportunities.
Augusta HiTech is a product engineering company that delivers enterprise-level strategy, innovation and software product engineering services. Founded in 2009 and located in Boca Raton, Florida, has a global presence supporting clients in industries such as Healthcare, Travel & Hospitality, Retail, Financial Services, and more. August Hi Tech has set up “campfires,” or education partners, where their leading engineers teach and mentor aspiring creators in regions throughout the world. They have selected CCEI, in Brownsville as a “campfire” site.
“I am greatly pleased to see that BCIC is partnering with CCEI to introduce students to the Information Technology industry,” says Pat Hobbs, Executive Director at Workforce Solutions Cameron. “IT jobs are in great demand in our region, with great wages and strong career opportunities, and an increased supply of IT professionals in our workforce will attract IT-related employers to our area.”
Without knowing it, you’ve probably already used apps made with Flutter. Whether you shopped online, ran an ad campaign on Google Ads, made payments with Google Pay, or used a digital coupon, you’ve likely witnessed the results of Flutter’s still comparatively short history.
“Programs such as these help our small businesses and entrepreneurs in the development of cross-platform applications that enable companies to cut down on development costs of their own mobile or desktop apps,” says Nathan Burkhart, BCIC Director of Marketing & Small Business Development. “They eliminate the need to hire different software development teams and also save time since there is only a single code base to manage. The need for Flutter Developers will continue to rise in the foreseeable future, and BCIC is proud to partner with CCEI to help play a role in advancing that development.”
Flutter is unlike other popular solutions as it is not a framework or library; it’s a complete SDK – or software development kit – that already contains everything necessary to build cross-platform applications. For more information on the program or to register please email rhernandez@myccei.org.
To learn how BCIC is advancing an open and inclusive ecosystem of entrepreneurship in Brownsville and the Rio Grande Valley, please contact Nathan Burkhart, Director of Small Business Development for the BCIC at nburkhart@bcic.us.
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