The "Coding Tomorrow" Project Has Reached Over 185,000 Children in 5 Years

Implemented in collaboration with Vodafone Turkey Foundation and Habitat Association, the "Coding Tomorrow" project is spreading nationwide. As of August 2021, 80,594 children have been trained in 10 months, surpassing the goal of "reaching 70,000 children in a year" set in October 2020. With that, the project reached almost 187,000 in 5 years.

Vodafone Turkey Foundation and Habitat Association continue to spread the "Coding Tomorrow" project, which they implemented jointly to raise children ready for the digital future, nationwide to reach more children. As of August 2021, 80,594 children have been reached in 10 months, surpassing the goal of "reaching 70,000 children in a year" set in October 2020. Thus, a total of 186,828 children has been reached since the beginning of the project, August 2016.

The educational content of the "Coding Tomorrow" project has also been expanded. Accordingly, children's digital competencies are increased in different digital subjects besides Scratch training. As part of the project, children aged 7-10 receive Scratch and Tinkercad training, while children aged 11-14 receive Scratch and Microbit training. However, the training has been moved to the digital environment due to the pandemic.

Mr. Hasan Süel, the Chair of Vodafone Turkey Foundation , stated:

"As Vodafone Turkey Foundation and Habitat Association, we eagerly continue our 'Coding Tomorrow' project, which we launched six years ago to raise generations ready for the digital future. When we were considering how to use technology for humanity's good and respond to a social need of society, we decided to do a project first to increase people's technology literacy and their tendency to use technology, starting with children. Thus, in collaboration with the Habitat Association, we started teaching our children aged 7-14 to code, the digital world language, in August 2016. With our 'Coding Tomorrow' project, we aim to contribute to raising a generation that produces, not consumes. Until today, we have given coding training to over 185,000 children in 81 provinces. Moreover, we also enhance our educational content. Besides Scratch training, our goal is to help our children increase their digital competencies with various digital training subjects such as Tinkercad and Microbit. We will continue to grow our project's scope to reach more children across Turkey."

Mr. Sezai Hazır, the Chair of Habitat Association , also stated:

"It is a source of happiness and joy, not only for us but also for our country, that our 'Coding Tomorrow' project reaches more and more children every day. Since the beginning of the project, we have reached over 180,000 children. We continue to prepare our children for the future, help them become Turkey's most influential actors in digital transformation, and enrich the educational content of this valuable project, which contributes to learning coding, the language of the digital world. Besides Scratch training, we also continue to develop our children's digital competencies with important digital educational content such as Tinkercad, which allows them to explore 3D worlds, and Microbit, where they discover global electronic software. We feel excited and motivated to be able to touch the lives of our children with educational content that regularly expand. I believe that with this valuable project, whose contents we enrich and will be leveraged by more children, we will support the raising of individuals who transform and lead nations. Because we believe the 21st century will be a century that will allow individuals to transform and lead societies with their digital skills."

Hackathon on 8 different topics

As part of the "Coding Tomorrow" project, hackathon and ideathon events are organized on eight different topics, entirely online. With these activities, the participants are expected to create stories that will produce solutions to well-known social problems. 103 students in 45 teams participated in the ideathon titled "Smart Technologies for the Environment Idea Marathon", the first of which. In the ideathon, where participants were asked to develop solutions to climate and environmental problems using smart technologies, the TED-R Green Future team won first place with the "Fismatik" project in the high school group, while the Stenocora team won first place with the "Artificial Dew Tree" project in the middle school group.

The inclusion of AI (Artificial Intelligence) training

As part of the project, children aged 14-17 will receive educational content such as mobile application development, games, and AI. It is also aimed to improve the digital competencies of employable youth by including vocational high schools in AI training. Last year, Vodafone Turkey Foundation and Habitat Association collaborated with The Clubhouse Network, among the world's largest education platforms. Now, these organizations aim to expand the scope of this collaboration by including youngsters in these groups by joining The Clubhouse Network online.

Each investment of 1 TRY yielded a social return of 4,4 TRY

Within the "Coding Tomorrow" project, children between 7-14 across Turkey receive theoretical and practical training by volunteer trainers on various subjects, including the introduction to programming, algorithm logic, application development, storytelling, and game development. Our training helps our children understand programming, work to bring out their creativity, create their imaginary worlds, and produce their games. While the project achieved 6,6 million TRY of social value in one year, each investment of 1 TRY for the project yielded a social return of 4,4 TRY.