Coding is a girl’s best friend

We wanted to make a change and get girls interested in the industry. Last week, 18 girls aged 13 to 15 arrived at our Code Camp for Girls, excited to learn to code. Our mission was to light a spark and get the girls into coding and the ICT industry.

The code campers spent the week learning to code HTML and CSS with our own Frantic developers, Sanna and Sonja, starting off with some basic lessons in creating and designing websites. During the week they designed and built their own websites. The campers had free hands with their design and building their sites. Many created sites for their pets, hobbies, favorite games, blogs, and even their parents’ companies.

In addition to our own gurus, we had two guest speakers at the camp. First, Tiina Zilliacus told the girls about what it’s like to run a game studio. Our campers were very interested to hear about being an entrepreneur and working in the game industry. After that, Juhani Mykkänen gave an inspiring lecture about why coding is important and why its importance will only increase in the future, as bigger parts of our lives will be digitalized and robotized.

It was delightful to see the excitement grow as the campers started to see their websites take shape. The consensus was that coding is actually much easier than they had thought, but also incredibly fun. Even if most of the campers had joined the camp because their parents had suggested it, the feedback we got from them proved that we had indeed lit a spark – who knows, we might’ve even opened up some new career options for them! As we gave the campers their diplomas and presented all the websites they’d created, it was truly awesome to hear the girls say that they want to learn more to improve their creations.

While we begin planning the next camp, we hope that our campers continue to learn independently and keep up the great work. If you’re interested reading about how it all went from a camper's perspective, read the blog post written by one of our campers.