New digital education activities will take place in Italy and the UK during this week’s Hour of Code global event.
For the third consecutive year, YOOX NET-A-PORTER GROUP (YNAP) is participating in Code.org’s Hour of Code initiative – the biggest technology learning event worldwide aimed at expanding participation in computer science. The leading online luxury fashion retailer is hosting dedicated activities in the UK and Italy to inspire children, especially young girls, to learn about technology through the lens of fashion.
This Friday, a group of local girls aged between 15 to 18 will head to YNAP’s West London Tech Hub to take part in a special fashion focused hackathon. The session, delivered by YNAP tech team, will teach the budding innovators how to code the design of a t-shirt inspired by brands sold on NET-A-PORTER and MR PORTER sites. YNAP developers will also be delivering inspirational talks and showing the students what a typical morning in a busy technology office looks like, offering them an inside look at projects and activities various YNAP teams are working on.
In Italy, YNAP is joining forces with Fondazione Golinelli to host public programming workshops and sessions for younger children aged between 4 and 14 both at Opificio Golinelli as well as visiting local primary and secondary schools. YNAP volunteers will teach the youngest attendees pixel creation and drone programming. Meanwhile those aged 12 and above will learn about block programming by creating the perfect look for this season using Sphero, a programmable sphere-robot.
As an online luxury fashion retailer, our business depends on hiring the very brightest digital talent. Equipping young people with the skills they need is a way for us to widen our future pool of talent while in turn boosting the wider digital economy as a whole. We are proud that our digital education programme has now reached over 5400 children and we’re looking forward to inspiring more young people, especially girls, to unlock their creativity through tech in 2019.
Deborah Lee, Chief People Officer of YNAP
These Hour of Code sessions are the latest events in the digital education programme that YNAP runs in partnership with Imperial College London and Fondazione Golinelli in Italy. Since 2016, over 5400 young people between the ages of 3 to 18 have participated. In 2018 alone, more than 3400 young people have been trained, with 70% taking part in the Imperial Codelab classes being female.
The learning activities for this Friday’s session in London have been designed by the ‘Imperial Codelab powered by YNAP’ team, – a joint initiative between YNAP and Imperial College London which has been teaching the basics of coding to under-represented groups, with a focus on girls. The classes take place in West London.
Through Imperial CodeLab powered by YNAP, we hope to inspire the next generation of tech innovators and attract more girls to the tech industry. 67% of the students attending these classes feel inspired to study Computer Science at GCSE level, this is real testament to what can be done when exploring coding through a creative approach, such as the lens of fashion
Susan Eisenbach, Professor of Computing, Imperial College London
