Europe Code Week: learning to code for the future

Posted by Marielena Ivory, Pre-university Education Specialist, Europe

The European Commission estimates that more than 900,000 high tech jobs will go unfilled in 2020. While digital competency is one of the most important prerequisites for getting a job, too few students are studying computing to prepare them with the skills they'll need. We want to help fill this gap. To help encourage more school age students to learn about computing, we’re participating in the European Commission initiative, Europe Code Week, which takes place Oct 11-17.

We’re providing small grants to organizations who are running events in nearly a dozen countries, from Spain to Slovenia. In Sevilla, Programamos is going to teach 100 students to code. In Athens, we’re supporting coding workshops for underprivileged girls with Greek Geekettes . Other innovative projects range from Atelier-Gouter du Code, which is bringing coding workshops to students in underprivileged areas of Marseilles, France, to Python for Everyone through the University of Ljubljana.

An important priority in this year’s event is encouraging girls to explore computer science. To that end, we are also coordinating Hangouts on Air interviews, hosting female Google engineers from across the continent to show children, especially girls, role models in the tech field. Tune in to Europe Code Week’s Google+ Page to watch the upcoming Hangouts on Air.

See Code Week’s events page to see all the different opportunities to participate in this celebration of computer science.