CoderDojo - Support kids learning to code globally

Helping young people learn from home 

Dear Friend,

I hope this message finds you well. 

Not enough young people have the opportunity to learn about technology through making. We want to change this and that is only made possible because of donors like you who support our mission.  

Since our last update to you, we have been working hard to engage, listen and respond to the needs of our passionate global community. Your donation is helping us to continue supporting our clubs as the landscape of local restrictions continues to evolve.

Supporting our Community

Since June, more of our clubs have been running online and some are starting to open in-person. We’ve been developing and delivering lots of free guidance and resources to support our club volunteers. These offer best practice on how to run your club online and in-person safely, how to run engaging online sessions and how to keep young people safe. To date we’ve run 21 webinars and community calls, with over 1500 people watching so far. Volunteers are telling us our webinars have helped them to set-up clubs in new formats:

“I think this training was great — I feel like I'm well set up for getting the Code Club sessions underway and the children enjoying them! I think the course covered everything we need for now very clearly, and in a really friendly, encouraging tone” - Course participant

Sharing Learnings

We’ve also been bringing our global community together to share learning across borders. For exampleLeeds Libraries Club shares their  top three tips for running a successful online club to inspire the wider community. They have adapted their Clubs and established a thriving online coding community as part of their #LibrariesFromHome offer. 

One volunteer cites: “Lars (Leeds Code Club attendee, aged 9) has really enjoyed it.. [..] it’s given them something to do and new skills to learn in lockdown. Lars says: it’s ‘very, very, very fun’”.

We’ve also introduced lots of exciting new online coding projects for clubs and young people to engage in, like our new ‘Look After yourself’ module. 

New Collaborations

Other Dojos are working together in new ways to reach young people. In northern Italy, a network of CoderDojos has banded together to create a series of large-scale online events where over 100 regular attendees at a time can meet, code and collaborate.

Learning from Home

Our new Digital making at Home live stream code-along series is also full steam ahead. In direct response to the pandemic we have been delivering a live stream every week which is accessible by learners all over the world. Topics have ranged from machine learning to keeping the planet green.. to coding in space!  

We’ve delivered 29 live sessions so far, with thousands of viewers tuning in in the UK, US, India and across the world.

You can watch back the live streams here, or check out our latest online coding projects ‘Look after yourself’ and ‘Protect our planet’ on our website.

We look forward to updating you soon on our plans for 2021. Thanks for helping us to keep our community coding!

Wishing you all the best,

Bryony