CoderDojo Bray Update and call for mentors

[Bray CoderDojo]

Hello,

our first set of 6 sessions came to an end last Saturday, and now we're on our own mid-term break! We hope if your kids attended the first set of sessions that they enjoyed them and are eager for more.

If you attended the sessions and have any feedback, we'd be more than happy to get your comments.

Due to non-availability of some mentors on the 10th November, we plan to resume on Saturday the 17th of November and run for 5 weeks this time, taking us up to near the Christmas break.

Our plans for this next session depends on you: for our first block of sessions, we had huge demand. We had more than twice as many applicants as places. We're limited in the physical space in Pres, so we have to restrict numbers via our ticketing system.

However we would very much like to give as many kids as possible access to CoderDojo Bray. We have the necessary equipment now, we have the space kindly donated by Presentation College. We have our starting course materials.

If we had sufficient mentors, we could run twice as many sessions on Saturday at two different times and cater for (nearly) everyone.

So we are asking you, the interested parents, for help: if you can find an additional 15-20 mentors in your workplace, or among your neighbours, or among the students in your older kid's university, then we can run twice as many sessions and cater for twice as many kids. Mentors will be Garda vetted, we can help with the procedure.

It is only fair that the children of mentors have preferential access to dojo places, and that obviously goes for any new volunteers and mentors too.

If we don't get additional mentors, then our next session will by necessity be restricted as before to ~65 kids and a lot of kids will be disappointed.

We attach a one-page flyer which you can use on noticeboards, with our email address. We're asking for prospective mentors to contact us so we can get an idea of their availability. Mentors don't necessarily need to have great in-depth technical skills: a good level of basic computer knowledge and a willingness to study up in advance and learn along with the kids would let us have "rookie" mentors dealing with less advanced topics and the more technical dealing with harder things.

We would also like to expand our subject matter, to cover basic electronics, robotics, digital photography, and other subjects which require equipment. As we are a purely voluntary organisation and have no funding, we would be very grateful for donations of suitable equipment (or money) which we could put towards these projects. If you have any ideas on how we could raise funds for CoderDojo Bray and would like to help, we'd be grateful for that too. 

Further details on our next set of sessions will be announced well in advance of the 17th. The precise content and timing will depend on the number of mentors we have, but we'll be in Pres as before, on Saturday afternoons.

Enjoy the mid-term break.

CoderDojo Bray Team

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CoderDojo Bray is free of charge because of the volunteer efforts of our mentors, sponsorship from HLB Sheehan Quinn (www.sheehanquinn.ie) and provision of a venue by the Presentation College Bray.CoderDojo Bray could not happen without their support, and we are extremely grateful for it.

We do not plan to actively fundraise, however if you would like to make a donation, provide equipment, or help out, please contact us at bray@coderdojo.com. Any money of equipment donated will be used solely for CoderDojo.

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