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Code Club was founded in 2012, by Clare Sutcliffe and Linda Sandvik ,” We share a belief that it is essential that children are introduced to coding at an early age and shown how much fun it can be.“

To hear more about what inspired the start of Code Club from Co-founder Clare Sutcliffe watch her talk at TEDxBrighton called Hacking the future.

In 2015 Code Club joined forces with Raspberry Pi. Here is an article by Philip Colligan, CEO of Raspberry Pi Foundation: Putting a Code Club in every community

In short – no. Not charging for Code Club is one of our core tenets, and we make all of our materials and resources available for free and our volunteers give their time for free. We do not allow clubs to charge for attendance as it goes again the ethos of the organization.

Code Club UK is a registered charity with theRaspberry Pi Foundation.

Here in Canada, Code Club Canada is a project with Digital Moment, a nonprofit charitable organization. Any money that Code Club Canada makes goes straight back into our work and operations.

In Canada any adult who wishes to work with children using Code Club Canada material should have a vulnerable sector check conducted. Here in Canada, Code Club Canada is a project with Kids Code Jeunesse which is a nonprofit charitable organization., so you can pay the reduced fee for nonprofits of 35$ by following this link: sterlingbackcheck.ca/kids-code-jeunesse OR You can have a free police check done at your local police station. We recommend the Enhanced Police Check.

In order to be a Code Club volunteer you do not need to be a coding genius! You do however need basic technical skills to be confident on a computer. If you feel unsure about your technical skills try out a Scratch project from the Code Club Curriculum and see how you do.

Code Club’s materials were designed for children aged 8-12. However, younger and older children have successfully taken part in Code Clubs, so treat this age limit as a guideline only. It’s worth bearing in mind that if you decide to teach younger children they may need extra assistance in reading and working through the projects. You might also find our materials are suitable for older children, especially if they have no previous experience of programming.

We currently have six ‘terms’ worth of projects. Each term is 6 weeks, on the basis of completing one project per week. Terms 1 & 2 use Scratch to teach the basics of programming. Term 3 & 4 teaches the basics of web development using HTML and CSS. Terms 5 & 6 teach Python, and so on. Although we design and release our projects to match the school year, this doesn’t mean that you have to run your club in this way. For example, you might want to start your club midway through the term, or you might decide you don’t want to teach Scratch and jump straight ahead to Python. Feel free to use our projects and run your club as you see fit.

All of our projects are now updated for Scratch 2 and these are available via our projects page. If you’re still using Scratch 1.4, don’t worry, the first 6 of our Scratch projectsare compatible, although the names of the blocks are sometimes a little different.

Code Club fully rely on funding from trusts, foundations and companies to help us create and provide free resources and support for our volunteers. In order to apply for that funding and report our achievements, it is essential that we can measure our impact to find out how well we’re doing and what can be done better. One of the ways we do this is by measuring the number of clubs that have been opened by volunteers. Asking our clubs to register helps us secure the future of Code Club so we can continue to teach children to code for free for many more years to come. Registering clubs also important to help keep the children who attend Code Club safe, so that we know who is running the club and that they have been appropriately checked according to local regulations.

Code Clubs are an hour long session and usually happen each week during school term time. You can of course adapt our model to suit your needs! To be a volunteer you will need to have time to go to the venue each week for the club and to make sure things are prepared beforehand. We think a sensible minimum commitment would be to run a club for 12 weeks, to give the children a chance to really get stuck in with coding, but we hope that you will love Code Club and run your club for ages and ages!

Code Club’s model is flexible, and can be adapted to suit you and the children in the club. Each project is designed to take about an hour to complete, and clubs usually run for one hour weekly. You can run a Code Club anywhere with computers, internet access and adequate space. For example at a school, a library or a community centre. There is no need for the club volunteer to be an expert in programming. If you can work through the first few projects on your own, you will be fine to go through them with the children.