Celebrating Code Club Canada!

Code Club Canada reaches new heights in 2018 — 548 clubs and counting! But we can’t celebrate this achievement quite yet without taking a proper look at the driving forces behind our growth.

Last year was a big one for Code Club Canada, starting with the official launch last September that kicked it all off. Kids and parents joined us at Benny Library in Montreal to get familiar with our new initiative through a Scratch workshop and interactive demos that introduced them to HTML, Python, Raspberry Pi and micro:bit. And at that point, we were already at 70 clubs Canada-wide.

Once Code Club Canada was officially on the map, we wanted to give it a worldwide ring. And so we were eager to participate in Astro Pi: Mission Zero - a global event launched by the European Space Agency, where Canadian students got the chance to have their code run on the International Space Station for the very first time. To get kids coding, we offered introductory Python Sense-HAT workshops in science centres and art spaces in over 5 cities across Canada, with nearly 300 kids in attendance.

Jumping over to 2018, Code Club Canada hosted its own version of Moonhack. An event originally started by Code Club Australia, Moonhack invited young coders around the world to break the record of yearly participants and to promote engagement and inclusivity in digital technologies. In 2018’s edition of the event, 35,865 kids worldwide participated in Moonhack. And we were excited to know that the 940 kids that took part in our workshops in Canada helped highlight and celebrate the inclusivity and the diversity within STEM fields

By the summer of this year, Code Club Canada had reached 350 clubs, bringing coding projects to every Canadian province and the country’s largest territory.

A student from Alberta said that being part of a club was what made them fall for code.

"I love Code Club. It's my favourite part of school. I wish we could have it more often,” said the student. “Some of the projects are kind of tricky but I can always post my question on our forum and sometimes we can help each other that way. Otherwise we usually just figure it out together when we meet again. I'm going to get a job doing coding when I grow up."

A club leader from Ontario said that code worked in inspirational ways for some of their students:

“One child has learned great resilience through coding,” the leader said. “His emotional growth has been exponential, as coding is something he enjoys enough to try repeatedly. He has transferred his feelings of success from perseverance to other areas of his life, and has really grown.”

Today, Code Club Canada has grown even more. Clubs continue to pop up, which proves that kids are interested in becoming innovators and creators in an increasingly digital world. Not to mention that 56% of these kids are girls!

We wanted to say thank you to all of the dedicated volunteers and the passionate coders that make our growth possible — we wouldn’t have made it without you, and we’re looking forward to continue coding with you for the years to come.

Want to give the kids in your community the opportunity to learn code? Then Start a Club today!