16th September 2015
CoderDojo youths to teach MEPs about code at #EUDojo to celebrate Europe Code Week!
CoderDojo youths to teach MEPs about code at #EUDojo in the EU Parliament to celebrate Europe Code Week!
On September 30th, in collaboration with Sean Kelly, MEP, CoderDojo is running a special event at the European Parliament in Brussels, which will bring together young people, MEPs and industry leaders from across Europe to launch Europe Code Week.
Digital literacy is fast becoming an essential competency for everyone living in this connected world. According to a recent European estimate, by 2020 Europe is expected to face a shortfall of more than 900,000 technically skilled employees.
Despite the need for young people to learn technical skills, few are given this opportunity. CoderDojo, the global movement of free, volunteer led coding clubs for young people are running their annual #EUDojo event in the EU Parliament hosted by MEP Sean Kelly. For this event 40 young European CoderDojo coders, some aged as young as 8 years old, will travel to Brussels to showcase their coding and technology skills and to teach MEPs their first lines of code.
At the event, the young people will teach MEPs how to create a basic HTML website during a two hour session in the European Parliament. They will also be demoing the projects that they have created with the knowledge gained from attending their local CoderDojos.
To open the event Benedetta (9) from CoderDojo Allumiere, Italy will be playing the Anthem of Europe, “Ode to Joy”, using an instrument that she built herself with code. Also during the event, there will be an industry panel made up of members from Microsoft, Salesforce, Liberty Global, Google & CoderDojo co-founder Bill Liao, which will be moderated by Mary Moloney, Global CEO of CoderDojo.
Sean Kelly MEP, will be encouraging MEPs in attendance to become CoderDojo Ambassadors, and to get involved in addressing the digital skills gap by pledging to start at least one Dojo each. The Pledge a Dojo campaign which runs from 1st October, aims to get as many individuals from across Europe to pledge to start new CoderDojos in their communities and to give young people in their localities the opportunity to learn to code in a fun safe and social environment.
This event has been made possible through the support of Sean Kelly, CoderDojo Foundation, Microsoft, Salesforce, Liberty Global, SAP and Google.