YES WE CODE Birmingham Experience 2015 from Alabama NewsCenter on Vimeo.

Dozens of receptive and perceptive students visited Birmingham June 28-30 on their way to New Orleans as part of the #YesWeCode #DigitalFreedomRide.

The 10-day tour started in West Palm Beach, Fla., before arriving in Birmingham Sunday, picking up students at stops along the way. Eighty middle and high school students will end up on the trip.

In Birmingham, Alabama Power hosted the students as they explore ways to use technology and how to use that interest to forge futures for themselves and their communities.

Yes We Code is a national initiative to help train 100,000 low-opportunity young people for careers in technology. The aim is to provide them with the resources and tools they need to become world-class computer programmers.

In Birmingham, the students visited the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute and the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church. Officials from Alabama Power, University of Alabama at Birmingham and Innovation Depot offered insight to the students.

The Alabama Power Foundation is providing support for the bus tour.

“By exposing students to this career field, we’re hopeful the wheels of creative genius will shift into high gear,” foundation President John Hudson said.

Yes We Code is collaborating for the second year with Estella’s Brilliant Bus, begun in 2009 by Estella Pyfrom. The retired veteran of 50 years at Florida’s Palm Beach County School District recognized the technology challenges for her students and chose to do something about it. Dipping into her pension fund, she created a nonprofit, state-of-the-art mobile technology and learning center.

At its end in New Orleans July 3-6, the top “hackathon” teams on the trip will pitch their app ideas on the main stage at the 2015 Essence Festival.

Photos and video by David Macon and Bruce Nix.