Young Rewired State
We’ve been asking for suggestions about how you think we should spend the 50% of our profits that we’ve pledged to give away to Free Software causes, and we want to highlight some of the ones that we think are particularly worthy of support.
To kick off, here’s Ruth Nicholls to tell all about our first highlighted organisation: Young Rewired State…
Young Rewired State is an independent global network of kids aged 18 and under who have taught themselves to program computers. We introduce these children to like-minded peers at events around the world where they use freely available open data to make websites, apps and algorithms to solve real world challenges.
Every summer we run a Festival of Code which takes place across the UK where over 1000 kids team up in local centres to build their prototypes and then unite for the Festival weekend to demo what they’ve made. The next step for us to is to make it a global Festival, linking in teams from around the world who have participated in our YRS Everywhere hack weekends. We’re lucky to operate in the digital space where geographical boundaries mean very little!
Our aim is to find, foster and challenge every kid who can code and offer the support for talented programmers which is missing from schools and colleges. Our events provide the kids with access to a network of talented mentors and industry experts, as well as linking them up with other kids who share their interests. Today, coding skills are a powerful tool and we want to instil the kids in our network with a civic hacking ethos, where they use their talents to benefit their communities.
Our hack events bring together under-18s with enthusiasm for coding, problem solving and creativity and provide them with expert mentors, open data, civic challenges and pizza. The rest is up to them!
Find out more on their website, and check out their video too:
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About The Author
Mike Saunders
Mike stores his data by printing out hex dumps and laminating the sheets. He's the author of The Haynes Linux Manual and the creator of MikeOS, an operating system hand-built from assembly language.
Maybe I’m just an old sucker for a bit of piano music and amazing kids, but I actually found this quite moving 🙂
If this is the kind of thing you are thinking about, then you (still) have my full support.
As a parent with 2 yo twin boys, I get inspired seeing the positive engagement, attitude and growth opportunities an organisation like this brings to kids. If either or both of my boys show interest in coding then I think I would like them to become involved with a project like this (I am in Australia – so may have to find an equivalent). Thanks for the post!
We would love to do something like this in Australia! We have a YRS Everywhere program where we travel all around the world hosting YRS events. If you know anyone who might be interested in assisting, please contact kait@rewiredstate.org. Cheers!
Thumbs up!
Education in all forms are great candidates for donations, with huge potential for societal gains.
If only I had learned captcha in school..
Is that really where you intend to spend your profit???
Well you guys rock even more than I thought then 😀
Anything that will teach a kid to think outside the box get my vote ANYTIME
I have been a mentor for Young Rewired State for the past two years and will be again this year because it is such a brilliant project! So if you can't give any money, give some of your time and be a mentor.
How about supporting YaCy as an alternative search engine to Google. Or even the YaCyPI kickstarter.