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News portal "15min" shares news about the event:

"Children's Message to Adults: We Use Technologies to Build Safe Lithuania"

On the International Children’s Day more than 200 children participated at the true technology feast, first end of season event of a unique initiative offered to Lithuania’s children, “Sourcery for Kids”. Lithuania’s President Dalia Grybauskaite visited program’s young IT developers and evalutated their projects.

„Sourcery for Kids“ is the first initiative in Lithuania inviting children ages 7-12 to learn creative technologies for free and to discover the coding world. Long term initiative seeks to make computer literacy available to all children, especially in remote areas and to children experiencing social exclusion. Such goals earned valuable country leader’s support during the visit. Dalia Grybauskaite announced that “Sourcery for Kids” was officialy added to her initiative, nationwide social campaign “For A Safe Lithuania”.

“It’s exciting to see that a private business, those young people who are raising their young children start such initiatives and understand the value of opportunity to learn programming, new instruments, how to learn about the new world and how to build it. It is wonderful that it was started by our business, that went abroad, learned came back to Lithuania and teaches our children now. I’m glad that you joined my initiative “For A Safe Lithuania”. You are a part of new business, western with the experience of a transparent culture, so I ‘m happy to support you,” congratulated Her Excellency Dalia Grybauskaite.

During the event President visited Academy facilities and was introduced to the pojects children have been working on. They were so excited to see her joining in and inserting the missing code into their program, which they’ve built following the safe emotional environment theme, tested “emotions” control keys built using “MakeyMakey”, and checked out mobile app prototypes built by older students.

Viktoras Gurgzdys, “Devbridge Group” vice president and “Sourcery for Kids” initiator, talked about the technologies as a tool for person’s growth and development: “Tomorrow’s developers speak in technologies language. With its help children fulfill their creative ideas, develop skills that become a foundation for their successful future. Our goal is to guide children the right direction and show that “screen time” can be used for creativity, not for consumption and every child should learn to code. I'm sure that the President will encourage this change, inspire parents and children to discover technology as a means to build a safe and prosperous Lithuania."

According to „Sourcery for Kids“ initiator, even though we are great technolgy creators and our work is known around the globe, our focus on this study field today in Lithuania doesn’t reflect it. According to him, IT is a creative and progressive path that should become an important part of national education politics: computer literacy should be available to all children. Especially we’d like to encourage more girls who quite often run into old stereotypes regarding this field,“ added V. Gurgzdys.

To mark the end of the first school year at the Academy, children created a project together – programmed message which young programmers introduced with some help from „MakeyMakey“. Holding each others‘ hands, children turned the message on saying „ together we build safe Lithuania.“ After President joined in, national social responsibility campaign „For A Safe Lithuania“ sign appeared on the screen as well.

 „Sourcery for Kids“ opened its doors in September of 2017 when it welcomed first 200 children in Kaunas and Sakiai. Last March it doubled in size and expanded to other regions with the Kazickas Family Foundation joining in. Thanks to this partnership, now 416 children in 5 towns (Kaunas, Sakiai, Raseiniai, Plunge and Klaipeda) are learning programming for free. The Kazickas Family Foundation supports this innitiative with a believe that computer literacy reduces exclusion and helps children to better understand the world surrounding them and serves as a tool to express themselves.

“Our foundation has been encouraging computer literacy since 1998 when we started a project promoting computer literacy among young students. Since then we’ve been supporting various programs, offering scholarships, organizing competitions to motivate Lithuania’s and especially young people’s progress in the IT field. We’re so excited to see new progressive initiatives such as „Sourcery for Kids” that lay out the foundation in preparing Lithuania’s youth for job market,” commended Jonas Algirdas Kazickas.

Thanking for the support, V. Gurgzdys addressed the community of technology specialists: “I invite all active IT world members to join our initiative and together to create a change on a nation level,” he shared.

"Devbridge Group" - is a software development company based in Chicago with a team of more than 350 employees in Chicago, Toronto, Kaunas, Vilnius and London offices. Their clients - financial, technology and manufacturing companies all over the world, such as „Grainger“, „Morningstar”, „Fitch”, „Louis Dreyfus”, „John Deere” and others."

Photos: Courtesy of Devbridge Group