Members of the Riverview Boys and Girls Club afterschool program are getting the chance to learn coding and other digital skills, thanks to funding from the Federal government.
A $1.5 million investment was announced yesterday to be divided between 20 Boys and Girls Clubs across the country. The Riverview Club is receiving $10, 000.
Program Director Matt McKeigan says this will be offered to children between the ages of 7 and 12 years old, ” We want to get them at that age, when maybe they haven’t quite started to learn the digital literacy skills and give them a headstart for when they start introducing them in school, and when they start developing their hobbies as well. We are hoping the kids will really fall in love with this and start to pursue it as a career.”
McKeigan says the funding will be used to purchase new equipment and computer programs for their tech lab.
He will be one of the leaders teaching skills to the kids, “I think the job market in the future is going to be more and more dependent on information technology and digital literacy is going to more and more dependent on these computers.”
The funding was announced this week by Alaina Lockhart, Member of Parliament for Fundy Royal, during a visit to the Boys and Girls Club of Riverview, which will benefit from this funding program.
CanCode is a $50-million federal program that gives students from kindergarten to grade 12 the opportunity to learn coding and other digital skills. The funding will also provide thousands of Canadian teachers with the tools needed to educate Canadian youth on these skills.
The Riverview Boys and Girls Club hopes to have the new programs up and running by March or April.
