digital skills

People gathered in a group holding Code Club signs.

Fundació Bofill: Creating inclusive Code Clubs across Catalonia

Fundació Bofill is a non-profit organisation dedicated to fostering equity through education. They partner with Code Club to promote digital skills to young learners across Catalonia (an autonomous community in Spain) who might otherwise miss out.

Ellie Proffitt, Global Partnerships Manager at the Raspberry Pi Foundation, recently chatted to Ana Holschuh Heras, Code Club Community & Research Coordinator at Fundació Bofill, to learn more about how Fundació Bofill’s Code Club network in Catalonia has grown. Read on to learn what Ellie discovered.

People gathered in a group holding Code Club signs.
The team at Fundació Bofill

Why Code Club matters

In Catalonia, only 5% of the extracurricular activities that children participate in are technology-related. What’s more, due to financial barriers, 34% of children from low-income families do not participate in any extracurricular activities, which sharply limits their access to learning opportunities.

Fundació Bofill is determined to change this. Code Club stood out to them as a brilliant way to drive such change with its free, accessible projects in a format that would suit young learners. It seemed the perfect fit — not only to bridge the digital skills gap, but also to build a community in which young people would feel empowered to shift from passive consumers of technology to active creators.

“We believe every child has the right to learn programming creatively, giving shape to their imagination.” — Claudia Iannicelli, Code Club Regional Coordinator

A glimpse into Catalonian Code Clubs

Ana and her team chose to set up their clubs in schools and communities in under-resourced neighbourhoods where access to afterschool clubs is often limited.

Fundacio Bofill now supports an incredible 110 Code Clubs across 21 municipalities. That’s over 1,518 children who are benefiting from the opportunity to learn to code, who may otherwise have been excluded. 

Three young people sat in a row looking at laptops.
Creators attending a Code Club led by Fundació Bofill

A typical club session begins with a warm welcome and a recap of the day, followed by unplugged activities that spark critical discussions on technology and its many uses. Learners then dive into programming challenges, often working in pairs, to develop their problem-solving and coding skills. Reflections and previews of upcoming activities close the session.

“We help each other and learn as a team because I think without teamwork, you can’t work well.” — Code Club participant

Fundació Bofill’s clubs run in 16-week blocks, with four distinct phases: 

  • Building a Code Club community
  • Exploring programming concepts
  • Engaging in collaborative projects
  • Having a community showcase finale

The community showcase finale is an exciting highlight for everyone. Club members show their coding projects to their families and their wider school community, with attendees also getting to learn about Scratch and programming — often for the first time. It’s a wonderful example of how Code Clubs bring people together, and can inspire everyone to engage with technology in some way.

Representation for the next generation 

At the heart of Fundació Bofill’s Code Clubs is a dedicated team of 21 club mentors, who the organisation calls ‘dinamitzadores’. Leaders like these play a pivotal role in creating safe, engaging, and inclusive learning environments where all children feel empowered to explore and innovate. 

A group of people sat and standing holding Code Club branded cushions and signs.
Code Club leaders at a training event in Catalonia 

Nearly 90% of the dinamitzadores are young women aged 20 to 30. Representation matters — 47.5% of club attendees are girls — and having female leaders in technology is a powerful way to inspire girls to see themselves in tech roles. 

“The key role of a leader is to guide rather than teach, allowing children the freedom to develop their own projects and learn from the process and mistakes.” — Marta Salvador, Code Club leader

“When you make a mistake, it’s not a failure — it’s an opportunity to improve.” — Claudia Iannicelli, Code Club Regional Coordinator 

What’s next?

Fundació Bofill achieved so much in 2024. What’s in store for 2025? 

They have three clear aims: 

  • Increase the number of active clubs and participants
  • Ensure long-term sustainability by embedding Code Club into local educational policies
  • Continue to empower children, especially girls, to see themselves as future leaders in technology

A big congratulations to Ana and all those at Fundació Bofill for their work so far. We can’t wait to see Code Club grow even further across Catalonia!

Find out more about our Global Clubs Partnership network and how you can get involved.

Digital Moment: Building coding communities in Canada

Code Club partner Digital Moment is supporting young people to learn digital skills in clubs across Canada. Ellie, Global Partnerships Manager, caught up with Matthew Griffin and Léa Guez from Digital Moment to find out more.

Two girls, sat at a desk, looking at their laptops.

Unique challenges

Digital Moment was founded in 2013 with a focus on creating programs and experiences for young people and their communities on digital skills, covering coding, algorithms, data literacy, and artificial intelligence. Not long after, Digital Moment joined forces with Code Club. On the benefits of the programme, Matthew says:

‘’Code Club is a way for us to build sustainable communities of practice, build depth in our offerings, and engage a diverse audience across the country.’’

Digital Moment faces some unique challenges in giving every child in Canada the opportunity to join a Code Club and learn new digital skills.

Firstly, Canada is huge! From snowy mountains and wild waterfalls, to beautiful blue lakes and built-up cities, Canada stretches almost 4700 miles across. It’s a challenge just to physically reach a large, dispersed population. Additionally, Canada is a country with two official languages. Some clubs use English, some use French, and some use both.

So, how are they overcoming these challenges? In terms of language, Digital Moment always produces materials in both English and French to cater for everyone. See which Code Club projects have been translated into different languages by clicking on the top right-hand box on the Code Club Project site.

The Code Club projects page.

Digital Moment also uses online communication to keep in touch with remote communities that are difficult to get to in person. It helps that the Code Club materials are designed to help clubs pick up the programme quickly and easily, without needing a lot of training to get started.

An inclusive approach

Matthew and Léa say the key to engaging with Canada’s diverse communities is to meet young people where they are at, and use that as the starting point to working together.

Code Clubs provide a great platform to be able to do this. With a wide range of projects, and young people encouraged to share their passions and make what matters to them, Code Club is able to provide an inclusive space for all young people to get involved.

As one Club Leader in Canada reports:

‘’[Code Club] is a safe space that opens many doors and everyone is welcome. The ideas that students come up with are amazing! […] Seeing their smile and sheer joy when they finally “get it” or make it work is magic!’’

The Digital2030 Challenge

In 2019, Digital Moment started a ten-year mission to tackle global problems. They began to provide annual challenges for young people across the globe to develop skills in coding, data, and artificial intelligence, to tackle some of the world’s most pressing issues. The Challenge is available online and there is step-by-step guidance for each activity.

Currently, there are two challenges: Reduction of Plastic Pollution and Good Health & Wellbeing.

A scrolling gif showing the #Kids2030 webpage

The aim is to build a community of socially conscious young people with a shared desire to make the world a better place. Does that sound like the young people in your Code Club? Digital Moment invites you to get them involved! The Challenge is open to young people everywhere. Why not take a look at the current Challenges together at your next club meeting, and look out for the third Challenge launching in August 2023.

Try out The Challenge with your Code Club and keep up to date with the launch of the next activity by visiting digital-2030.org.

TagusValley: Telling stories from Portugal through digital making

TagusValley, a science and technology park in Portugal, partners with Code Club to give local young people the opportunity to express themselves through digital making.

Ellie, Code Club Global Partnerships Manager, chatted to Homero Cardoso, Project Manager at TagusValley and one of the co-founders of its Code Club network to find out more.

Five people facing the camera smiling .
The TagusValley Code Club team

How it started

In the heart of Portugal lies a small municipality called Abrantes. With a sparse population, and not much in the way of a technology industry, many of the young people here think you need to go somewhere bigger for new opportunities — that is until TagusValley brought Code Clubs into local schools.

Homero saw the potential in using Code Clubs to show young people how fun technology can be and how it can open up endless possibilities. He trialled Code Clubs in ten classrooms for a few months, working with teachers to deliver the sessions. It was a big hit.

‘‘The kids loved it, the teachers loved it, the municipality loved it.’’

The local municipality loved it so much they wanted to fund the programme to continue. So Homero gathered a small team to go out to local schools and continue to support teachers in running clubs. They now visit 30 classrooms a week.

“For us it’s a process of discovery — themselves (the students), their capacity, their ability to create something, their discovery of their surroundings.’’

A young coder looking at a screen working on a Scratch project.
A young coder exploring Scratch

The oldest olive tree in Portugal

Abrantes is home to a 3,350-year-old olive tree. Locals will tell you it’s the oldest in the world, but others may disagree! Children in Code Clubs were tasked with featuring the olive tree in a project. They created a game in which a character is trying to pick the olives from the tree, whilst avoiding a bird that is trying to poop on them! As you can imagine, the coders had a lot of fun creating the characters’ reactions when the bird achieves its mission.

By using culturally relevant storytelling and taking a ‘no limits’ approach, Homero says the children’s imaginations grow and grow.

‘’When they start to have crazy ideas, instead of telling them ‘that’s crazy’, we say ‘that’s really cool!’ Have you thought about something even more crazy! We can create anything!’’

This approach has had a very positive impact. Some children have developed an enthusiasm for coding outside of their regular Code Club. One boy was on holiday when he saw a book on Scratch that he insisted his parents buy him. When he came back to school, it was the one souvenir from his holiday he was most excited to bring back to Code Club and show his friends.

Coding as a universal language

Abrantes is home to a multicultural population. When two Urdu-speaking girls joined a Portuguese-speaking Code Club, coding helped everyone to communicate across the language differences. After a quick bit of online translation to find the Urdu version of Scratch, the girls quickly figured out how to create what they wanted, and were able to share their creations along with their classmates.

A classroom setting with children sat in pairs, working on a laptop.
A Code Club session

You can see which Code Club projects have been translated into different languages by clicking on the top right-hand box on the Code Club Project site.

What’s next?

Homero is keen to get his students involved in next year’s Astro Pi Mission Zero. He is also working on a programme to encourage mature students from local universities to volunteer at Code Clubs.

He would like to help more teachers feel confident about teaching coding. Homero sees the training and support as key to fostering the abilities and confidence of the teachers in school, so they can continue running clubs themselves, and to ensure the long-term success of the programme.

Find out more about becoming a Code Club Global Partner organisation.