Name
API TEST - Curiosity, Kids, and Coding: Natural Agility
Description
What do you get when you combine curiosity for learning, kids, and coding? When you create a space that centers on child-led learning giving kids the autonomy to choose what and how they learn and you continually iterate, reflect, inspect, and adapt, you get natural agility. TriValley CoderDojo (TriV) is a non-profit club that offers free learning opportunities to kids ages 5-19 years in leadership, teamwork, collaboration, public speaking, and computer programming.  We are a community-based and community-operated, all volunteer-run organization.  Our members are the youth who attend our sessions, their parents, and some high school and adult individuals from the community who volunteer.  Membership and session events are free.  Members and volunteers are not required to commit to any level of attendance, so that while many choose to attend each week, they are not obligated. Most of our members attend and contribute as convenient.  Each week is independent of the other.  We are open to the public, and while most of our members are local to the TriValley area in which we are based, we also have members who come from other areas across the San Francisco Bay area to attend. As a free club, TriV operates with no revenue. Each member and volunteer are equal to one another. Among volunteers, they self-select roles and operate in self-managing teams with no hierarchy, titles, or authority. Since transitioning from in-person to online sessions during the pandemic, we have continued to increase our membership across broader geographical areas. Our members and volunteers participate and contribute remotely. These conditions present unique challenges in running the organization. Few of our club members are familiar with Agile concepts or have even heard of the term Agile.  Yet, by operating through our core values, continually looking for ways to improve how we serve, and treating all stakeholders as partners in our process, we have managed to scale from one session monthly at the local library in 2013 to weekly sessions of 80-100 attendees across 5 different locations (pre-pandemic).  Presently, TriV is one of the largest and longest running clubs in the CoderDojo network. Many clubs are small, hosting groups of 10-20 kids, and it is not uncommon for clubs to close after volunteers move on or burn out. In 2018, TriV was featured in an article as an Agile model in education. In 2019, Raspberry Pi and CoderDojo Foundation representatives visited our club to observe TriV practices to share with their networks. While many clubs have closed during the pandemic, our volunteer team has made the transition to online sessions and continue to serve our membership. As of 2021, TriV has operated for over 7 years, with more than 2900 member families joining our club (and growing), and we have served to date over 14,000 kids. In March 2021, we were awarded the Jefferson Award for Public Service which is the most prestigious and longest-standing public service award in the United States that is given at both local and national levels. Given the above challenges, this is an incredible achievement!
Valerie Freitas
Session Type
Talk