TPF4Y is excited to announce a partnership with Eleven Fifty Academy that will inspire students in 20 communities around Indiana to learn more about computer programming!
TPF4Y focuses on underrepresented student populations, or those students least likely to make their way into a STEM career: girls, minorities, and kids from low-income backgrounds. These students report that they don’t know anyone who works in those fields, and they don’t understand what people in STEM careers do. Even Google reports less than 17% of their leadership team is female, and less than 5% of their overall workforce is made up of black and Hispanic employees.
That's why TPF4Y is committed to offering equal access opportunities that target these student populations. And with the help of Eleven Fifty, we're going to be offering coding throughout the state.
It starts with Eleven Fifty bringing their new, interactive weeklong program, Cool Coding Week, into 20 communities across Indiana, fostering students’ coding knowledge and growing their coding interests. There will be five programs in each community targeting students in grades K-12 with developmentally appropriate coding curriculum as well as a free two day Intro to Coding class for ages 16+.
This is where TPF4Y comes in. We don't want to lose momentum after the excitement of Cool Coding Week, so we're working to establish CoderDojo coding clubs in each community, creating a sustainable way for students to continue engaging with computer programming.
CoderDojo is a global movement of free coding clubs for young people who want to learn how to code, develop websites, create games and explore technology in a creative environment with help from a variety of mentors. Originally started in Ireland, this movement has spread around the world as young people between the ages of 7 and 17 are looking to meet like-minded people and to be exposed to the creativity and possibilities of technology.
The addition of these new CoderDojos, plus the 10 Dojos TPF4Y has already started in Indianapolis through the US2020 initiative, will make Indiana the state with the most Dojos in the U.S. It will also make TPF4Y the largest provider of afterschool coding clubs in Indiana.
We're excited about getting this initiative up and running and are looking forward to a successful partnership bringing coding to the whole state! #GoCode