Bridging the digital divide

The first fax I sent, I sent 10 times. I had to – it wouldn’t go. It kept returning from the bottom of the fax machine. It took an irate phone call from the recipient to curb my enthusiasm. New technologies challenge us, but they also allow us to connect. In the digital age this is truer than ever. Digital competencies have become an indispensable part of everyday life, and 90% of jobs require digital skills.

However, not everybody has the skills needed to reap the benefits of the digital age, and we need to address the gap between the current level of digital competencies and those demanded by an increasingly digital world. This need gave birth to EU Code Week.

GOPA Com. supports the European Commission in addressing the long-term digital skills challenge by raising awareness about EU Code Week. This includes strengthening and building networks and relationships with educators, organisations and businesses, and encouraging schools, teachers and pupils to participate in the initiative.

Our joint work has paid off, and EU Code Week in 2019 had a record 4.2 million participants in more than 72,000 activities in over 80 countries around the world. The event brought coding and computational thinking to more schoolchildren than ever before – 92% of EU Code Week events took place in schools, which shows that efforts to empower teachers during the 2019 campaign were successful.