“CoderDojo is an open source, volunteer led movement orientated towards running free not-for-profit coding clubs and regular sessions for young people. Since CoderDojo is open source all Dojos are different and completely autonomous! At Dojos, young people between 8 and 16 years old learn how to code, develop websites, apps, programs, games and much more. Dojos are set up, run by and taught at by volunteers. CoderDojo also puts a strong emphasis on open source and free software, and has a strong network of members and volunteers globally.” - www.coderdojo.com
Andrei, one of the founders of this project in Oradea and a mentor and organizer in Timisoara, visited us at Qubiz office and we discussed with him about the project and the support we are offering for this project.
Andrei: The project started in Timisoara one year ago and after that I realised I want to do the same thing in Oradea, my home town. We are in Oradea since the beginning of 2014 and we have been running this project for 9 weeks now. Coder Dojo Oradea involves children between 8-16 years old, who are passionate about programming. In Oradea, there are around 50 - 70 children. Their mentors are high school students, undergraduate students, employees from companies in Oradea, high school teachers and university teachers, all teaching them various programming languages.
Andrei: We have our weekly meetings, every Saturday, between 11.00 - 14.00, on the premises of a local business in Oradea. Here the children can develop not only their programming skills, but also their soft skills such as: communication skills or people skills; during the breaks we have small team buildings in which they can see how they should act in a team. The main idea behind the project is that the children are organised in different teams based on age, skills or technologies.
Andrei: The only requirement is that person to know at least one programming language. No matter which one. And of course, another thing is that they need to be willing to do volunteer work and share their knowledge, meaning their programming knowledge, with the children.
Andrei: Vlad and Ionut are very dedicated to what they do in the project. I like the fact that they are committed. I think that they can improve their patience, they can share their knowledge, they can interact with other people from the IT domain in Oradea and they have the chance to learn more about the latest technologies. We really appreciate your support and we are looking forward to a great cooperation in the future.
More about Coder Dojo, you can find here: https://coderdojo.com/about and Coder Dojo Oradea: https://www.facebook.com/CoderDojo.Oradea.
by Alina and Andrei Munteanu