Published: Mon, 15 June 2015
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Seán Kelly MEP joined the Cork-originated CoderDojo youth computer coding skills organisation in celebrating the Coolest Projects Awards on Saturday, June 13th.
Saturday’s event celebrated the extraordinary success of the Irish-born youth project in the RDS.
Mr Kelly, a long-term supporter of CoderDojo since its inception, has welcomed the awards which this year includes 550 projects submitted by kids and young people from the global CoderDojo community and many very talented and enthusiastic kids.
“CoderDojo is an enormous success story with over 500 clubs in 50 countries, 350 of those clubs are Europe-based. That’s remarkable growth,” Mr Kelly said in praising the volunteer-led CoderDojo initiative which was co-founded in Cork by James Whelton and Bill Liao.
“The Coolest Projects Awards further encourage youngsters to put their new skills to use by creating and entering projects that showcase their talents. It is a wonderful example of how we can educate and up-skill the future generation,” he added.
The Ireland South MEP was responsible for hosting a special CoderDojo MEP teaching workshop in the European Parliament last year, helping to raise awareness of the global network of clubs. Marking ‘EU Code Week’, the CoderDojo event involved youngsters from Ireland, Italy, Poland, the Netherlands, Belgium, Romania and Poland taught MEPs how to write code.
Have a look at some the photos from the event on our Flickr page: https://www.flickr.com/photos/seankellymep/
CoderDojo is a global network of volunteer-led, independent; community based programming clubs for young people. These young people, between 7 and 17, learn how to code, develop websites, apps, programs, games and explore technology.
