This is how we coded: a recap of Europe & Africa Code Weeks

Dec 20, 2018

[[read-time]] min read

Obum Ekeke

Head of Computer Science Education Programs, UK & Africa

Verónica Gebhardt

Computer Science Program Manager, Europe

Computer Science (CS) education is critical to preparing students for the new global economy, but unfortunately many young people lack the opportunity to develop these technical skills. As part of our commitment to help one million Europeans find jobs or grow their businesses by 2020 and to train 10 million Africans by 2022, we want to change that.

That's why this October, we supported Europe Code Week for the fifth consecutive year, and Africa Code Week for the third consecutive year, funding 76 education organizations in 33 countries. Over the course of the two weeks, we worked with 166,000 students (56% of whom were girls) and 4,600 teachers to help them develop the skills to get involved in computer science.

This year at Europe Code Week, a grassroots movement started by the European Commission, we funded 25 organizations in 21 countries which all together inspired 77,000 students in computer science.

Cheshire East Libraries ran workshops designed to encourage kids to engage with computer science. The results were a real catalyst for staff, who have gained the confidence to now run their own Code Clubs in Alsager and Bollington, with other libraries planning to launch additional Code Clubs soon.
More than 300 students in Slovenia took part in 27 programming workshops offered by our grant recipient FabLab Network.
Lithuanian teachers learning to offer Computer Science education activities in their classrooms in Kaunas, Šiauliai and Šalčininkai experienced the creative side of computing with augmented reality using smartphones and Google Cardboards. Ninety teachers participated in workshops provided by our grant awardee "Information Technologies Institute."
In Tuzla, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Laboratorium set up a workshop where in one project, team “Tribus” worked on a collaborative website for disaster preparation, learning about HTML, CSS and JavaScript.
Students of all ages were so excited about the models they made during their 3D printing workshops that ANBPR (our grantee in Cluj, Bucharest and Brailia) offered an additional session at the national Library of Romania.
At Attymass National School in Ireland, students drew on their computational thinking skills to create their first coding programs using Scratch and Google's CS First activities.

In Africa, we joined forces with SAP and Africa Code Week to fund 53 organizations and grassroots groups across 11 countries. Over 107,000 students were able to explore computer science through a variety of fun and interactive workshops.

Tych Zoe Global Network organized coding workshops for 871 students at several schools in Nigeria as part of Africa Code Week 2018.
LetKidsCode provided coding workshops for 550 beginners to spark interest in ICT and related careers in Gambia.
Kitale students learning programming using Edison Robots during Africa Code Week workshop.
SIYAFUNDA CTC empowered community center trainers to provide coding programs to more than 50,000 students.