Insights
The Meet and Code scheme offers charities the chance to win grants of up to €500 towards virtual youth coding events
The Meet and Code scheme is an exciting initiative that aims to get young people into coding. The scheme hopes to inspire young people, aged between 8 and 24, to develop their digital skills and have fun while doing so. You can learn more about the Meet and Code scheme in our recent article.
Now in its third year, Charity Digital’s partnership with Meet and Code UK & Malta allows charitable organisations to apply for grants of up to €500 towards coding events for young people. However, things have changed in 2020. Due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, submitted events for this year must be fully virtual.
Now that applications have opened, charities might be wondering how they can spend the grant money on virtual coding events. To help charities who are thinking of applying, we spoke with two organisations who’s event submissions have been approved and asked them about how they’ll be running their events online.
Paisley YMCA are a digital youth organisation that support young people in developing their coding and other digital STEAM related activity using their Makerspace. We spoke with Youth and Programme Development Manager, Darran Gillian, about how they’re getting the most out of Meet and Code.
What positive impact do you hope to make through your coding event?
Young people living in Renfrewshire are experiencing high levels of digital illiteracy. These issues act as a barrier to employment and education opportunities in later life, particularly a lack of (STEM) opportunities for young people aged 15/16-year-olds who are ready to leave secondary education and enter into the world of work. We hope this coding event will show young people who think they can’t code that they can and that it’s easy, accessible and leads to job possibilities they did not consider before!
What inspired you to want to run an online youth coding event?
We support over 300 young people per week at our Makerspace and other STEAM based outreach activity across Scotland. When lockdown stopped front line delivery, like many other youth orgs, we started to deliver online. This developed into a new opportunity to deliver digital youth work throughout the Renfrewshire area and support many more young people to code and develop STEAM learning.
How are you preparing for your event being virtual as opposed to face to face? What changes are you making/ new technology are you using?
Throughout the last 15 weeks of lockdown, we have been delivering online code events and hackathons so we are now well prepared to deliver this event. We will supply digitally excluded young people with laptops, webcams and other equipment to take part in this event. We’ve also changed our delivery content to reflect the teaching requirements of online learning.
What advice would you give to other organisations thinking of running their own online youth coding events?
Contact an established organisation that is already delivering online events or youth related code events. Ask them questions or take part in their events and then try to replicate. You can change to reflect your organisation’s identity or to reflect your local area and suit their needs.
The Globe Community Library is staffed entirely by volunteers. They serve the town of Stokesley and the surrounding area. The Globe provides a safe environment for people to meet up, browse the library for books or videos or join one of their clubs. We caught up with Trustee Peter Chandler to learn more about how they’ll be using Meet and Code to help their service users.
How do you think your event(s) will benefit young people?
Even in normal times, teenagers and young adults are silently at risk of isolation and poor mental health. Now COVID-19 has also created many new young carers and lack of school support is disproportionately affecting the poorest in our midst. Our Meet and Code grant funded event, the Online Community Shed, can change that. The virtual event series will be letting like-minded people meet online to learn new coding skills, share worries and create new relationships.
Why do you think digital/technological skills are so important for young people to have?
Virtually everything we do today requires the use of technology so it is vital that young people are tech-savvy.
How are you preparing for your event being virtual as opposed to face to face? What changes are you making/ new technology are you using?
We are evaluating online meeting services including Microsoft Teams, Airtable, Zoom, Facetime and Skype. One of our volunteers is also an Alexa Developer, so we may be able to include this as well as artificial intelligence and robotics, such as Arduino, Linux or Python-driven.
How will you use the grant money towards your virtual coding event?
We expect that we will need to pay a license fee to use some of the Cloud-based software. We’ll also be paying to provide Raspberry Pis, iPads or Laptops (on loan) to some of the participants.
What advice would you give to other organisations thinking of running their own online youth coding events?
Give it a go! The young people who take part really enjoy it and get a lot of benefit from learning and sharing knowledge with each other.
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