Wednesday, 8th October 2014: To celebrate EU Code Week 2014, UPC, in partnership with CoderDojo, has announced that they will create ten new CoderDojos across Ireland over the next twelve months.

UPC launched its first coding club, D4 CoderDojo in June 2014, with children as young as six learning how to embrace coding using the learning resources and guidelines of scratch. To mark the beginning of EU Code Week, UPC will host a special session in D4 Dojo on October 11th, ably assisted by a number of their younger coders such as Noah Scolard aged 10 and Tim Costelllo, also aged 10, who will help mentor 60 children through his bespoke scratch programme.

Introducing Noah Scolard who said; “I started coding in June this year and I’ve been involved incoding since I was in third class when my teacher did Class Dojo with our class. My brother had done Scratch before and had really liked it, so I decided to give it a try. My expectations were totally
exceeded. Now, as a mentor, I am helping other children try it out, so that they can be scratch geniuses when they’re older!”

Mary Moloney, Global CEO of CoderDojo commented; “Coding knowhow and experience is becoming an important skill for young people, whether for future jobs or as a basic literacy and problem solving tool, which they use in life. Being able to code is almost like having a superpower and EU Code Week offers us the opportunity to make coding more visible not only amongst the children themselves, but also among parents, teachers, people in technology and the general public.”

Grainne McLaughlin, VP Legal Services at UPC Ireland added; “UPC is extremely proud to be expanding our partnership with CoderDojo. Our goal is to enable CoderDojo to reach more and more young people, giving them the opportunity to learn vital coding skills that will help them become the next generation of creators. Peer mentoring is also key to the success of Dojos as young mentors are best placed to show other children their age the value and fun of coding!”

This announcement is part of UPC’s involvement with the Davos Declaration on the Grand Coalition for Digital Jobs, an initiative launched by the European Co mmission to respond to the shortage of workers in the digital sector for almost 900,000 ICT positions, including 7,000 Irish opportunities.
To register for special D4 CoderDojo on Saturday October 11th, please visit eventbrite.ie/D4CoderDojoStaroftheSea.

To find out what events are happening for EU Code Week in your area, please visitwww.codeweek.eu

ENDS

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About EU Code Week

EU Code Week takes place from 11th – 17thth October and is an initiative of the young advisors to European Commission Vice President Neelie Kroes. EU Code Week is about getting children, parents, teachers, entrepreneurs and policy makers to come together in events and classrooms to
learn programming and related skills. The first EU Code Week took place in November 2013 and featured over 300 coding events involving more than 10,000 people in 26 European countries. The initiative has attracted the support of coding and education movements like CoderDojo and Rails
Girls and industry peers like Facebook, Google, Liberty Global (parent company of UPC), Microsoft, Rovio, and Telefónica.

About CoderDojo

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. In addition to learning to code attendees meet likeminded people and get to show off what they’ve been working on.

The global CoderDojo community is supported by the CoderDojo Foundation. The CoderDojo Foundation consists of a core team of dedicated individuals, founded by CoderDojo co-founder James Whelton, who are committed to focusing on supporting both new and existing Dojos through resource and community development while also scaling CoderDojo through partnerships and creating awareness globally.