What we achieved in 2021

What a year! Despite the challenges that continue to be caused by the pandemic, we are incredibly proud of everyone in the CoderDojo community, for your positivity, resilience, and commitment to safety. Regardless of activity you and your Dojo have been able to do this year we would like to thank you for your efforts.

Looking back on the year

During 2021 over 700 Dojos have run either online or in-person sessions during 2021. Volunteers have been learning how to use video-conferencing tools. They’ve live streamed code-a-long sessions, recorded tutorials, and adapted their in-person sessions to keep all involved as safe as possible. Well done! Others have been sending out project resources to young people. 

New learning resources

36 new projects have been released over the last year. They covered three Scratch paths, an “Introduction to Python” path, a “Physical Computing with Scratch” path and the “Introduction to Lego with Raspberry Pi” path. Our content team developed a “Getting started with Scratch” guide, and a “Getting started with Raspberry Pi Pico” guide. We also updated our online safeguarding course, with fresh content taking online situations into account.

Celebrating creating with code

Dojos have also encouraged children to participate in Coolest Projects online. 270 Ninjas took part this year from 20 countries around the world. You can see some of the awesome projects young people developed for the online showcase in this blog. To celebrate Ninjas achievements we released 7 new certificates acknowledging their remote learning efforts and for completing new project paths.

CoderDojo’s 10th anniversary

In July we celebrated the 10th anniversary of the first ever CoderDojo session. We celebrated how the movement of CoderDojo has developed over the last decade over three months with two live streams, three workshops and more than a thousand downloads of our digital assets.

Throughout October we continued to celebrate 10 years of CoderDojo with a giveaway for young people to enter their birthday themed projects. One hundred Ninjas entered projects into the Birthday Giveaway.  Dojos who resumed in-person sessions also received packs to celebrate 10 years of CoderDojo face-to-face.

12 days of code

In December we encouraged all ages to get involved in 12 days of coding during computer science week. We shared web development tips and guidance across our social channels, check out one of our posts.

But what’s happening in 2022?

Thanks to all who participated in our quarterly Dojo poll. Hundreds of Dojos are planning to resume activity soon either online or in-person. We’re busy planning for 2022 too. We are developing the volunteer experience, making improvements to our website, supporting new Dojos, planning for next year’s Coolest Projects and creating additional project resources for young people. Watch out 2022!