CodeKIDS
Progress Foundation, Romania
Simplon, Romania
Why?
The quality of any education program in rural communities is poorer than average. As a consequence children in rural communities have almost no access to coding learning opportunities. Given the fact that their future will be digital, children with less opportunities would need extra support to become confident on their ability to learn and master programming languages and tools is very important.
What?
CODEKids clubs were open by public libraries in 150 communities where librarians facilitated free of charge learning of coding for middle school children. Two year curriculum was created and permanently adopted to the needs of the kids. Extra activities and gamification were included in the program. Regional Science fairs/CODEKids Fest events were organized so advanced children could work on projects and present them to the public.
So what?
More than 2300 participated in the Beginners group of CODEKids clubs and 879 of them went through also the Advanced group curricula. Dozens of them participated in open coding competitions at regional an d national level and won awards. Dozens of alumni of the project are part of the Robotics Team in their high-schools.
We provided access to quality and relevant education for children who have limited possibilities to break out of the underserved position of their families.
