We need you!

Code Club have over 1300 clubs in the UK now. That’s 1300 people kindly giving up their time to teach kids to code. This is a pretty incredible thing for them to do and it warms our hearts just thinking about how awesome they all are.

We travelled up and down the country filming some of them so they could tell you what it is really like and this is the result:

Thanks to Sonny Malhotra for making this awesome video!

On the flip side of this are the 500+ schools who want to have a Code Club but haven’t yet found a volunteer. Because of this we’ve put volunteer recruitment to the very top of our agenda so that no children miss out.

A couple of months back we did a survey where we asked developers what was stopping them from volunteering. Here’s what they said:

So we’ve set about tackling these issues. Firstly, we’re telling employers all over the country about Code Club and asking them to give their developers time out of their day to run a club. This seems to be working and even huge companies like Google and Morgan Stanley are into it!

Secondly, we’re working on ways of letting volunteers communicate through our website. This will be great for busy people because they’ll be able to talk to others in their area and get a team together to run a club at their local venue. This will be less time intensive for them – think of it as a club time-share! We are also going to be preparing some online materials which will help people learn about working with kids and how to use Scratch.

Whilst you are waiting for all of this to take shape we’d encourage you to head along to one of our upcoming meet-ups (see list below). These are a way for us to say thank you to our current volunteers and meet new ones. If you’re on the fence about volunteering then it’s a great chance for you to meet some people already doing it and pick their brains! If we’re not making it to you in 2013 then look out in 2014 as, chances are, we’ll be with you then.

Code Club organised meet-ups:

Glasgow
West Midlands
London
Reading
Birmingham
Kent

Volunteer organised meet-ups:

Brighton
Leeds