Tuesday, 21 February 2023 10:00 AM
Company Update
MIAMI, FL / ACCESSWIRE / February 21, 2023 / Building on two years of success of the partnership between Seeds of Light and CodeCombat, the Glow Academies program expects to reach more than eighteen US, and four international locations in 2023, providing over 54,000 hours of 100% free computer science education to youth from communities underrepresented in tech. Glow Academies offer on-site classroom learning for middle school age children through an entertaining and inclusive award winning computer coding curriculum developed by CodeCombat.
Working together with community partners, Seeds of Light has seeded an initial group of Glow Academies in 2021. Each locations starts as a Pilot, lasting six months, after which they are eligible to apply to be a permanent program.
The latest Programs to join Seeds of Light's initiative are Fly by Nature in Washington, D.C. and Creator's Camp, in Indianapolis.
Fly by Nature opened its Glow Academy recently and was able to participate in the bi-annual Glow Coding Tournament, which brings together all of the Glow Academies' students to compete against each other in a fun, educational and friendly e-sports event where they can test their newly learned coding skills to win the latest cool computer gear.
"The students wanted to stay late … we had students working on their code trying to optimize their strategy all the way until the end [of the competition]" said Darnell Early, co-director of Fly By Nature, who was getting text messages from students and checking the leaderboards all the way until 3AM EST, the deadline to submit the AI code for the Tournament.
With the proven model of delivering high quality computer science education, Seeds of Light's program also distinguishes itself by being extremely efficient, with a cost of less than $10 per hour, which is less than 1/8th of comparable programs. This ensures that Seeds of Light's investment, as well as those of its partners and grant providers generates the highest impact per dollar spent.
The Glow Academies have already provided over 300 children with 24,000 hours of education, and with continued growth in 2023, Seeds of Light will be working with partners to reach the goal of doubling that by increasing enrollment and the number of program sites.
"We are looking for partners to help grow this proven, impactful program" said Dr. Edgar White, Director of Seeds of Light. "Our focus this year is bringing on board hardware sponsors to ensure that every child in the Glow Academies has their own computer to work with."
In addition, Seeds of Light and CodeCombat will coordinate with the individual programs to help them secure funding grants to ensure long term sustainability of each Glow Academy.
"We believe that these programs are a good fit for STEM Grant Initiatives like the Lockheed Martin's Social Impact and Google's Computer Science Grants, and we look forward to working with those potential partners for the Glow Academies"
Seeds of Light is a 501(c)(3), religious-centered charitable foundation focused on promoting the growth of positive momentum by focusing on small, but meaningful initiatives. Founded as a private foundation by a family of technology entrepreneurs, Seeds of Light is based in South Florida but with a national reach, as well as being active internationally. It focuses on projects that drive clear, measurable and positive change in the community. One of its core principles is that the modern world empowers people from diverse backgrounds to better their lives through the development of technological skills. This allows them to make a positive impact both in their professional life, but also in the world around them by using their newfound skills to create new and imaginative solutions to some of the world's oldest problems like poverty, malnutrition, and depletion of natural resources. To accomplish this goal, Seeds of Light is specifically focused on STEM education across age groups, from young children to veterans retraining for new careers.
CodeCombat makes computer science programs for students to learn coding while playing a real game. Since 2013, over 20 million people have learned to code using CodeCombat and Ozaria, putting them among the most popular coding games in history. CodeCombat was founded in February 2013 by George Saines, Scott Erickson, Matt Lott, and Nick Winter, who had previously developed the language-learning application Skritter. The company is based in San Francisco, California.
Contact:
Dr. Edgar White, Director
Seeds of Light
Phone: (305) 707 6674
[email protected]
https://seedsoflightinc.org
SOURCE: Seeds of Light