Enabling Dojo’s in 2016 and beyond

untitled-design-35Rachel here, wow what a year it has been! As some of you know I joined the CoderDojo Foundation at the end of May this year. Although, my involvement with the movement began over 2 years ago when I decided to help out at the local Dojo my daughter attends. To say I truly feel like a member of the CoderDojo family at this point is an understatement, coming in here to work everyday feels like walking into my own sitting room 🙂

 

I still help out at our local Dojo on Wednesday nights, but the rest of the time you can find me sipping tea at my desk in DogPatch Labs, answering community queries, processing Garda Vetting applications,  enabling the movement, developing key strategies and chatting away to everyone!

Even though I have only been working for the CoderDojo Foundation for 6 months I have managed to achieve a lot. I’ve successfully:

  • Taken over Child Protection for CoderDojo Ireland.
  • Streamlined our Child Protection strategy to reflect current Child Protection legislation
  • Onboarded many of our Irish Dojo’s and community members to the new Garda eVetting system and I have enabled several Child Protection Training Days nationwide.
  • Given unique & valuable insights on key strategies as a non-tech parent.

CoderDojo’s 5th Birthday Party

I also organised our 5th birthday party back in September, which was a huge success! It was great to see parents, community members and ninjas coming together to celebrate CoderDojo. On the day I learned lots of cool tips and tricks about engaging ninjas and encouraging parents to get involved. I advised volunteers on how they could organise their own milestone events and I ate A LOT of cake.

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EUDojo

screen-shot-2016-12-23-at-14-46-48I attended and helped out at my first EUDojo in Brussels. It was such an amazing experience, it’s not everyday you get to go to the European Parliament to discuss education and support amazing young people as they change the world with enthusiasm, ideas and hard work. I was blown away by the talent and drive of our ninjas, they were all so well behaved and served as excellent ambassadors for the CoderDojo movement, they should all be so proud of themselves. Hopefully I’ll  be involved in next years EUDojo!

DojoCon 2016

I was also on the organisation team of DojoCon 2016, which took place in DunLaoghaire at the end of October. This was a really challenging, multi-faceted project that required me to wear my volunteer hat and my CoderDojo Foundation hat at the same time. I loved being able to support the volunteer team in hosting an amazing 3 day event.

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I can’t quite believe it’s the start of a New Year. I always try to look on each New Year as being full of opportunities to grow, learn and overcome obstacles. I’m excited to be in a position where I can offer support, take on board feedback and develop new and exciting strategies that will improve the CoderDojo experience for our global community.

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