Magic Moments — the 2019 Annual Report

At Canada Learning Code, we envision a prosperous Canada where ALL people have the confidence and know-how to harness technology in pursuit of personal and economic fulfillment. 

As champions for coding education, CLC meets this vision by offering coding programs and learning experiences from coast to coast to coast — and 2019 was a banner year! We ran experiences across the country and visited schools, expos, community events, and camps. We hosted Canada Learning Code Week, National Girls Learning Code Day, and National Ladies Learning Code Day. And we launched two new initiatives — our Teen Ambassador Program and our Digital Skills for Entrepreneurship course. For some folks, the CLC experience was their first foray into coding, while for others their experience reinvigorated a passion. 

Here are just a few magic moments from 2019…

Growing Our Reach

We hosted more than 3,100 meetups, courses, and camps, where we delivered hands-on learning experiences that support beginner coders to become both users and builders of technology. We delivered more than 310,000 meaningful learning experience, more than doubling our reach from all our previous years combined! And by offering programs in more than 420 communities, we expanded our reach across Canada. Since 2011, we’ve delivered over 590,000 learning experiences, with nearly 50% of participants registering for subsequent experiences after attending one of our programs. 

In 2019 we ran our sixth National Girls Learning Code Day and our seventh National Ladies Learning Code Day. Each year, these events provide opportunities for female-identified, trans and non-binary learners to experience tech and build their skills. Nearly 50 communities across Canada hosted National Girls Learning Code Day workshops this year, reaching more than 750 girls. Our theme was Entrepreneurship with Webmaking, where girls used Glitch to build websites that addressed problems they were interested in solving. Nearly 700 learners participated in National Ladies Learning Code Day, with exciting projects that focused on User Experience (UX) Design.

Driving Change

At CLC, we are committed to building a more diverse workforce in the tech industry. By creating learning experiences that support our communities of focus, we provide them opportunities for gaining knowledge and tools to thrive in a growing digital world. 

And in 2019, the feedback we heard from participants supported our drive for change. When asked, 66% of adults, 81% of educators, 72% of teens and 70% of parents (on behalf of their children) expressed that they felt more confident in their ability to build things or solve problems using tech because of their experience with CLC. In total, 83% of adults surveyed and 88% of teens also expressed interest in continuing to pursue tech training and/or education. 

Building Capacity in Educators

We aren’t going to grow our impact without engaging educators! More than 6,300 educators, across all grades, took advantage of our Teachers Learning Code programs in 2019, giving them the tools and resources they need to bring coding experiences into their classrooms. Nearly 4,000 educators participated in our third annual Canada Learning Code Week alone, leading more than 200,000 students to participate in tech, either in their classrooms or extracurricular programs.

Engaging teachers has a lasting impact. Those teachers now understand the importance of including digital literacy in their lesson plans and are more interested in teaching code and tech. In fact, 88% of educators who participated in a CLC experience or used our resources have incorporated coding into their classroom. 

Launching New Opportunities

In 2019, we also launched two exciting new learning opportunities — the Teen Ambassador Program and our Digital Skills for Entrepreneurship. We had hundreds applicants from across Canada for our Teen Ambassador Program, and we onboarded 60 Ambassadors. This dedicated and committed cohort connected with over 140 students to bring tech learning opportunities to their own communities — a successful inaugural year! Digital Skills for Entrepreneurship offered adult learners the chance to develop their tech skills in order to pursue new business ideas, grow an existing business or get a new job.

We are so excited by what we accomplished in 2019 and look forward to building on our impact as we stretch to reach 10 million learning experiences by 2027!

To learn more about our impact and our accomplishments, as well as hear from some of our learners, volunteers, and instructors, please check out this year’s annual report.

We would like to take this opportunity to thank all of the individuals and organizations who invest in our work, our funders make this impact possible. For a full listing of our amazing funding partners or to learn more about how to get involved click here.