A new initiative aimed at organizing extra-curricular classes for children and young people coming from Ukraine has started as part of PAFF’s “Sector 3.0” Program.
Under technological hubs in Warsaw, Kraków and Lublin a series of workshops in robotics and programming will be held for Ukrainian children and teenagers by the “Sector 3.0” program volunteers – the Mobile Advisors. The task of hubs that hold those various technology workshops is to support Ukrainian children age from 3 to 12 years in their very difficult time.
With the support of Mobile Advisors the children and teenagers will learn about Photon robots which are helpful in teaching how to program at various levels. The meetings will hopefully help children forget their last experiences, at least for a while: to enter the world of programming and robotics and spend time with their peers in an interesting way.
The first pilot meetings conducted by “Sector 3.0” volunteers took place in the middle of March and were very popular. Therefore a decision to continue them was made. On April 1 meetings under the technology hubs were held at one of the largest Polish help centers for refugees from Ukraine in Nadarzyn near Warsaw.
“The robots gave the children a brief respite. We showed them what machines can do and we saw that children had no problems with operating the devices. Everybody helps as much as they can and know how to do – for us it was combining our social mission with technology and meeting kids that were harmed by the war,” the Coordinator of the “Sector 3.0” Mobile Advisors network and co-organizer of the workshops, Filip Jędruch, remarked. Each meeting will be held for 20 participants. Mobile Advisors will use educational robots and tablets for animations and introducing children to the world of programming.
Workshops will take place cyclically in Kraków, Warsaw and Lublin in day centers and culture houses close to refugee centers. There will be no formal enrollment to participate in the events and detailed information will be provided by the following local coordinators of the action:
Warsaw: Sylwia Kubina-Mykytyn
Kraków: Agnieszka Wargowska-Dudek
Lublin: Monika Schmeichel-Zarzeczna
Mobile Advisors
The Advisors are a group of more than 60 “Sector 3.0” volunteers, experts most often professionally linked to the technology sector and/or NGO activities. They support NGOs through offering them training and consultation and thus helping them improve their digital skills in order to enable them perform more effectively. The thematic areas where they lend support include cloud computing, management applications, Internet communication, remote work and education, as well as technical and hardware consulting. This time, however, they will use their expertise to support children coming as refugees from Ukraine.
About the Program
“Sector 3.0” is a program of the Polish-American Freedom Foundation managed by the Information Society Development Foundation, which supports digital transformation of NGOs and use of new technologies for socially useful activities. In 2018 the program won a honorary recognition from the European Commission in the competition for European Digital Skills Award.
