Our Story

It goes by many names: “Covid 19”, “Coronavirus”, as well as more scientific titles such as “SARS-CoV-2.” But no matter the name, it will always be remembered. It was during this time, in the midst of a global pandemic, that the idea of Coding Pals began to emerge. Austin and I were high schoolers with a lot of free time due to school being moved online and quite frankly, we were bored. We had heard stories of people sewing masks to provide PPE for health care workers or holding virtual fundraisers to help combat Coronavirus but we could not sew nor could we bake. Thus, we contributed in the best way we could: we taught kids how to code.

Coding is without a doubt one of the most important skills one can have in the twenty first century but in Vancouver, there has always been a lack of access to coding as it just wasn’t a focus in schools. And because of that, coding was relatively hard to learn for those who couldn’t afford extracurricular classes. Thus, Austin and I decided to create and teach a Introduction to Python class. We advertised it all over social media with low expectations — we were proven wrong. Our class was met with an overwhelming amount of support as we quickly accumulated over 200 registrants in just a week. We recognized the need for completely free coding classes and from that, came the idea of Coding Pals, an organization that would provide free coding education to students across the lower mainland, nationally and internationally.