Children reach for smartphones, computers, and other electronic gadgets at a younger and younger age. Therefore, it’s important for those who are slightly older and more experienced, to show younger ones the right way to use them.
They need to ensure that young ones receive proper education about technology. It was with great joy that we undertook this extremely difficult mission together with the CoderDojo Foundation.
A few words about our client – the CoderDojo Foundation
The CoderDojo initiative comes from Ireland. It all started in Poland thanks to Kamil Sijko, who got to know the idea of CoderDojo during an educational conference in Dublin. Kamil and Łukasz Dziedziul founded the first Dojo, a local programming group, in Kamil’s hometown of Zambrów. This was in March 2013. Since then, the idea of CoderDojo has been gaining fans all over Poland.
The aim of this institution is the development of technological talents. They do this by teaching young people unconventional thinking and cooperation.
The Foundation organizes free workshops during which children (Ninja) learn programming, the basics of robotics, and electronics under the supervision of experienced mentors.
First things first – European Coding Week!
We began working with the Foundation in October 2019, when we announced the participation of the CoderDojo community in this great developer celebration. Interestingly, Poland is one of the leaders when it comes to the number of events organized – the Foundation itself is the initiator of almost 50 of them!
Once a year, during CodeWeek, all participants and mentors from across Poland gather in one place to program together. Their meeting – SuperDojo – is the largest summary of CodeWeek in the country. It is organized by the CoderDojo Foundation in cooperation with T‑Mobile Polska. In order to honor the tradition, over 350 people met during this edition in Warsaw! Thanks to our actions, the scale of the event was even bigger.
Editorial offices such as Programista Junior, Newseria, Telix, Mediomaniak, and Warszawski Serwis Prasowy discussed the Foundation’s activities and its participation in CodeWeek. To top it all off, Artur Kurasiński published an interview with Joanna Pawlak, president of the Foundation, on his blog.
Time for Fajne Granty from T-Mobile
In November, we did not slow down. On the contrary, we started announcing the program aimed at schools, NGOs, libraries, and cultural centers.
Fajne Granty (Cool Grants) is an initiative created by the CoderDojo Polska Foundation and T-Mobile. It supports initiatives and environments that deal with the dissemination of programming science in the local community.
As part of the Fajne Granty, institutions can receive funds and equipment. These allow them to implement educational activities with the use of new technologies.
We wanted to make the whole initiative loud, both locally and nationally. So, we started contacting local editorial offices, as well as IT, parenting, and educational portals.
These activities resulted in numerous publications about the idea of the program. They appeared on websites such as Edukacja.warszawa, Wyborcza.biz, mobilitynews, granty.pl, publicystyka.ngo, powiatczestochowski, fundusze.ngo, money.pl, Eurodesk, ngo.krakow.pl, and the websites of individual education authorities.
We were also responsible for contacting the institutions that received grants. We sent materials about the initiative to teachers. We also contacted local editorial offices to inform them about the work of the winners.
Journalists were very eager to write about the successes of the inhabitants of a given city or municipal district.
In search of mentors
The activity of the Foundation is developing very quickly, and the number of people willing to attend classes is growing at such a pace that there is a shortage of … people conducting workshops.
Therefore, in addition to media relations activities, we were also asked to help find mentors, i.e., people who conduct classes with children all over Poland for free.
For this purpose, we prepared a special graphic and the message content. In it, we describe the whole adventure of being a mentor at the Foundation and present the benefits of participating in this extraordinary community. We placed these materials on the largest Facebook groups connecting people related to education and the IT industry.
In addition, we contacted representatives of the largest Polish platforms connecting programmers – Just Join IT and IT-Leaders. The result of these activities are interesting interviews with Joanna Pawlak, published on the company’s websites.
The response to our message regarding the search for mentors was very positive: the Foundation gained several experienced teachers. The activities of the Foundation became very famous among the entire programming community.
And from that, it was only a step to even greater fame. Joanna Pawlak was invited to an interview for Wysokie Obcasy Praca magazine. She was also a guest of the Creative Mornings initiative, where she talked about the Foundation’s activities.
We are moving to the online world
Due to the situation caused by the coronavirus, we were unable to continue our communication regarding the classroom activities. Therefore, the CoderDojo Foundation and T-Mobile decided to transfer their educational activities to the online world.
And this is how Fajna Akademia (Cool Academy) was created. It is a series of free workshops for children on digital learning methods. Thanks to the program of activities tailored to the needs of children and parents, and our messages, places in classes were being snapped up!
Our current mission is to help even more people learn about the activities of the CoderDojo Foundation and the entire initiative. All to make this noble action even more famous and to gain new mentors.
If a light bulb has just appeared over your head and you’re thinking that you’d like to join this wonderful community, it couldn’t be easier! Just go to the website coderdojo.org.pl and contact the Foundation. Wonderful experiences guaranteed!