Volunteers Week: Meet one of Code Club’s longest standing volunteers…

Adam Cohen Rose is one of Code Club’s longest serving volunteers. He is involved with running his own Code Club, as well as helping with teacher training through Code Club Pro.

As part of our Volunteers Week blog series celebrating the work of our volunteers, we asked Adam to tell us a bit about his experiences, and what motivates him to be part of Code Club:

“I work with computers every day and I can really see the impact made by being able to understand computers and make them work on your behalf. I want to make sure that the next generation has the skills to reach behind the smooth interfaces of their smartphones and take advantage of the technology inside.

I started volunteering for Code Club when my son was 8 and only learning office skills on the computers at school. At the same time the #codingforkids movement started, so I pledged to approach the headmaster of my son’s primary school. I offered to start a lunchtime computing club for the children – I’m still running a Code Club at that school over three years later. My son told me that the thing he most enjoyed about school was Code Club — two years running.

Because I run a lunchtime Code Club at my local primary school, it’s very easy to run every week without taking time off work. My company gives me two days a year of volunteering time, which I’ve agreed to take spread out across an extra 30 minutes for three terms of 12 lunchtimes.

Code Club makes it easy to volunteer — there’s so much support that I pretty much just need to turn up and help the children through whichever project they are working on that week. It provides great projects that get children excited about starting to program — learning almost without noticing they’re doing so — and crucially bringing in just as many girls as boys.

For Code Club Pro I support teachers with the new curriculum. I help the teachers that are struggling to understand the computing environment to feel less scared and more empowered so they can help hundreds more children.”

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If you’re interested in getting involved in starting a Code Club like Adam, or volunteering with Code Club Pro, then you can find out everything you need to know about getting started on our website.