CoderDojo youth to teach MEPs during EU Code Week
CoderDojo Dojos busy at work

CoderDojo youth to teach MEPs during EU Code Week

7 Oct 2014

In a week’s time, the CoderDojo Foundation will be at the European Parliament, Brussels, bringing together young people, MEPs and industry leaders from across Europe to mark EU Code Week.

30 young coders from Dojos across Europe as well Irish MEP Sean Kelly will be demonstrating to European politicians their coding talents by teaching them how to create a basic HTML website in a two hour session in the European Parliament buildings.

The young coders who will be descending on Brussels on 14 October will come from countries including Poland, Romania, Italy, the UK, the Netherlands and of course, Ireland.

Two of Ireland’s own bright stars will also be exhibiting the projects that they have worked on and perfected during their CoderDojo sessions to the MEPs and industry leaders.

As Ireland’s MEP at the event, Sean Kelly will hope to encourage his fellow MEPs in attendance to become CoderDojo Ambassadors, and get involved in addressing issues, particularly the digital skills gap that exists within Europe by asking them to pledge to get a Dojo up and running in their constituency before EU Code Week 2015.

Along with the CoderDojo Foundation, the initiative is being partnered by Liberty Global with additional support for the event from co-sponsors Google, Salesforce.com and Samsung.

The event will be MC’ed by the new global CEO of the CoderDojo Foundation, Mary Moloney while Liberty Global’s senior VP and CPO Manuel Kohnstamm, will launch a communication campaign developed collaboratively with the CoderDojo Foundation designed to recruit more mentors and champions across Europe.

Colm Gorey
By Colm Gorey

Colm Gorey was a senior journalist with Silicon Republic. He joined in January 2014 and covered AI, IoT, science and anything that will get us to Mars quicker. When not trying to get his hands on the latest gaming release, he can be found lost in a sea of Wikipedia articles on obscure historic battles and countries that don't exist any more, or watching classic Simpsons episodes far too many times to count.

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