Vodafone foundation launches campaign to teach coding to Turkish children

ISTANBUL

The Vodafone Turkey Foundation has launched a new campaign to offer computer coding training to more than 1,000 children between the ages of 7-14 in five provinces across Turkey in cooperation with the Habitat Association. 

The coding training will be given in the Black Sea province of Samsun, the Aegean province of İzmir, the Central Anatolian province of Kayseri and the eastern province of Mardin, as well as Istanbul, representatives from these non-governmental organizations said in a press meeting on Aug. 25.

“I learned coding when I was 20 at university. Through this project, we aim to decrease this to seven,” said the head of the Vodafone Turkey Foundation, Hasan Süel. 

The plan is to reach at least 1,000 children in the next two months through the project, dubbed “Those Who Code the Future,” according to the project representatives.

“We aim to raise generations who create technologies, rather than just consuming them,” added Süel. 

The head of the Habitat Association, Sezai Hazır, said that learning how to code was now of the same importance as learning how to read and write, noting the biggest obstacle before teaching coding in Turkey was the inefficiency in the number of trainers who can teach how to code. 

“The kids who will be trained by us will be the trainers of the future,” he noted. 

A program dubbed Scratch developed for children by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) will be used in the training, according to the project representatives. The participating children’s development and algorithm skills will be measured and assessed during the trainings, which will be free of charge and open to any child who is between the ages of 7-14 and interested in technologies.