She Didn’t Wait for Opportunity. She Built Her Own. And Then the Money Showed Up.

The room didn’t look like the birthplace of a national tech movement.

It was loud.
Sticky.
Crowded.

Keyboards clacked like rainfall on cheap tile floors. Pop music leaked from a cracked phone speaker in the corner. Plastic chairs scraped, snacks were passed hand to hand, and the smell of sweat and overworked sockets filled the air.

In the middle of the chaos: Carolina, seventeen, teaching a JavaScript workshop to thirty girls—most of whom had never written a single line of code before that week.

This wasn’t a polished accelerator or a chic co-working hub.
This was a borrowed classroom on the outskirts of São Paulo, running on secondhand laptops, prepaid data plans, and pure determination.

But the energy? Electric.

A Movement Built on Grit and Google Docs

Carolina started Código por Todas with nothing more than a Google Doc and a gut feeling.

She had asked around at school, in her neighborhood, online: “Do any girls want to learn how to code?” At first, it was just her and two friends watching free tutorials on one shared laptop. Then six girls. Then twenty.

By the time it hit thirty, they were holding weekly meetups in donated classrooms. Carolina wrote every lesson plan herself. She built a curriculum by patching together online tools, translated software guides into Portuguese, and turned her WhatsApp group into a full-on community of girl coders teaching and learning together.

It was messy. It was magical. And it was unsustainable.

They needed space. Equipment. Food. Internet.
They needed actual support.

Carolina applied to local grants. Youth programs. Tech bootcamps.

She heard nothing back. Or worse—polite rejections that told her to “reapply next year” or “consider partnering with an official NGO.”

Her students didn’t have time to wait for next year.

Enter: A Suit and a Strategy

One of her volunteers—an older university student—pulled her aside after a long Saturday session.

“There’s a guy,” she said. “His name’s... weird. But he’s real. He works with international education grants. Not the usual kind.”

Carolina rolled her eyes. “We don’t need another panel speaker.”

“He’s not a speaker,” she said. “He’s the guy that gets the money to people who are actually doing the work.”

No Pitch Deck. No Permission Needed.

When Mr. Grant Money showed up, he came straight from the airport.

Tailored navy suit. Leather shoes that somehow avoided the tangled power cords on the floor. He walked into the room like he already belonged there. And then—he just watched.

No slides. No pitch request. No fundraising theatrics.

He sat in the back for two full hours while Carolina taught Python to girls who barely had internet at home. When the workshop ended, he waited until the last girl left before pulling her aside.

“You’re not running a coding club,” he said. “You’re leading an educational revolution.”

Carolina laughed. “Right. A revolution that can’t even afford snacks.”

But he wasn’t joking.

Insider Intel: What Most Grassroots Leaders Don’t Know

He opened a slim notebook and started listing grants. Real ones. From organizations Carolina had never heard of:

• UNESCO Girls’ Education Innovation Fund

• IDRC's Tech for Inclusion grant stream

• UN Women’s STEM Equity Fund

• Latin American regional education consortiums with youth-led, gender-tech funding priorities

“These funds exist for programs exactly like yours,” he said. “They just don’t know you exist. Yet.”

That’s when Carolina realized something:
The problem wasn’t that her project wasn’t big enough.
The problem was that the money didn’t know where to look.

💡 Insider Knowledge: Most international education grants require three things: impact data (even informal), a partnership model, and a strong narrative. Grassroots leaders often have all three—but don’t package them in funder language. That’s the missing link.

Building the Case—Without Losing the Soul

Over the next month, Mr. Grant Money helped Carolina do what no one else had bothered to explain.

They registered Código por Todas as a nonprofit—not to make it more “official,” but to make it eligible for the funders who needed that structure.

They translated her WhatsApp feedback threads into outcome data.
They mapped out a mentorship pipeline.
They built a logic model that turned “girl-led coding club” into a scalable educational intervention.

And most importantly—they kept her voice in everything.

“We didn’t polish it,” she said later. “We just proved it worked.”

The Grant Hit. So Did the Spark.

They landed a $250,000 international grant designed for regional ed-tech innovation.

It covered five city sites.
New laptops.
Fellowships for peer mentors.
A partnership with a telecom company to expand into rural communities.

Código por Todas has now trained over 500 girls.
Two graduates landed internships at Brazilian tech companies.

And Carolina? She’s now on a youth advisory board for one of the funders who once didn’t know she existed.

Don’t Call It Empowerment

Carolina doesn’t call herself a CEO. She’s still a girl who likes building things with code and snacks in hand.

And Mr. Grant Money? He didn’t come to “empower” her.

He came to back her. Because she was already doing the work.
Already leading.
Already building something no one else thought to imagine.

Sometimes, a movement doesn’t start with permission.
It starts with a messy classroom, a borrowed hotspot, and one teen girl refusing to wait her turn.

And sometimes, all it needs to go global—is someone in a sharp suit who knows exactly where the money lives.

Discussion & Personal Reflection Questions

1. Why do grassroots education efforts like Carolina’s often go unnoticed by major funders, and what helped her finally break through?

2. How did Mr. Grant Money shift the narrative—from “a coding club” to “an educational revolution”? Why does storytelling matter in grant funding?

3. What challenges do young women face when leading tech initiatives, especially in under-resourced communities—and how can funding systems better support them?

4. Why was it important that Carolina’s project kept its grassroots values, even as it scaled with formal funding and partnerships?

5. What does this story teach us about who gets called a “leader”—and how can we better recognize and fund leadership that doesn’t come with traditional credentials or titles?

More Resources & Related Topics:
📌 Explore more success stories 📌 Learn about grant acquisition 📌 Discover financial literacy resources 📌 Check out youth entrepreneurship 📌 Browse scholarship opportunities