In March 2020 the world went through some major changes. Leadership at IBM Canada was eager to see how we could come together as a community to support one another. My fellow associates and I decided to launch a virtual code club.

I initiated a partnership through educational nonprofit Kids Code Jeunesse because I knew they had a ton of high-quality and easy-to-foow resources our volunteers could use to deliver workshops in both English and French. We decided to offer Scratch workshops for students in grades 3-8 and Python workshops for students in grades 9-12.

The program was a big hit with parents who were trying to keep their children engaged during the break from school! We filled all 100 spots within 4 days of registration opening, and worked hard to open an additional 50 spots. The program was free so we encouraged parents to donate to KCJ upon registration.

Over six weeks we:

• Taught 24 different coding projects
  • 12 Scratch projects (grades 3-8)
  • 12 Python projects (grades 9-12)
• Held 70 small-group sessions in both official languages
  • 44 sessions in English
  • 26 sessions in French
• Engaged more than 150 students
• Trained and deployed 78 volunteers

The program was such a success, we ran two more cohorts! Across all three cohorts we engaged a total of 333 students and 106 volunteers across 160 scheduled code club sessions. IBM wrote about our impact on their blog, and we got a ton of great feedback from parents, volunteers, and senior leadership.

I highly recommend checking out Kids Code Jeunesse to start your own Code Club!