MINDFUEL TO DELIVER CODING TRAINING TO MORE THAN 22,000 CANADIAN STUDENTS

Every year, MindFuel helps thousands of young people across Canada gain valuable skills through interactive learning, programs and events

CALGARY, AB, April 14, 2022 /CNW/ - MindFuel is pleased to announce that it will support more than 22,000 underrepresented Canadian students gain access to critically needed coding training, thanks to extended three-year funding of $1.25M from CanCode, a federal program aimed at helping Canadian students learn digital skills including coding, data analytics, and digital content.

The CanCode 3.0 project comes at a critical time in Canada's push for innovation. Canada is falling behind in the world's innovation index, despite a recent 2020 OECD report showing Canada as one of the most highly educated populations. Canada lags in terms of STEM knowledge and its application, which hamper the potential for innovation and limit the future of work for young people. The inaugural State of Youth Report (2021) undertaken by Canada reveals significant areas of opportunity, both self-identified by youth and through expert recommendations, including highlighting Innovation, Skills and Learning as a priority area for youth investment and policy.

The quickly expanding STEM job sector can expect to see a 600,000-person labour shortage by 2025. Building on successes in CanCode 2.0, where MindFuel delivered coding training to over 40,000 youth, for CanCode 3.0, MindFuel will work with approximately 1,000 teachers across Canada to deliver advanced coding and digital skills training to an additional 22,535 students through to March 31, 2024. This will help to fill those anticipated labour gaps.

All MindFuel programs, including Codingville.ca, engage underrepresented youth in STEM education, including Indigenous students, girls, rural Canadians, newcomers and youth at risk. The extension of CanCode funding will also allow MindFuel to continue making impacts in all provinces and territories.

MindFuel's youth innovation partner network is critical in reaching the thousands of students and teachers across Canada, as follows:

• Digital skills training platform technology partner:

-  RoboGarden 

• In-the-field training partners:

-  Alberta Native Friendship Centres Association (ANFCA), AB

-  Carizon Family and Community Services, Kitchener, ON

-  Catholic Community Services of York Region, ON

-  Catholic Family Services of Simcoe County, ON

-  Community Family Services of Ontario, Toronto, ON

-  Dene Tha' Nation Community School, Chateh, AB

-  Family Service Ontario, Toronto, ON

-  Junior Achievement Southern Alberta, Calgary, AB

-  Logics Academy, Markham, ON

-  Mishkeegogamang Ojibway First Nation Missabay Community School, ON

-  Nokee Kwe – Indigenous-led Employment and Education Centre, London, ON

-  Northland School Division, AB

-  Schulich Ignite, Schulich School of Engineering, University of Calgary, Calgary, AB

-  Siksika Nation High School, AB

-  Thrive Counselling Services Halton Inc., Burlington, Oakville, Milton, North Halton, ON

-  YMCA Northern Alberta, Fort McMurray, AB

-  Yukonstruct, Whitehorse, YT

"Developing an innovation mindset among Canadian youth must be a critical priority for Canada's economic future," says Cassy Weber, MindFuel CEO. "The demand for skillsets developed through STEM training and the rise in STEM oriented jobs are growing rapidly. To meaningfully contribute to the Canadian-grown technology and science sector, we need to make significant investments into educating the next generation of homegrown talent with foundational skills development. We especially need to make these programs accessible to underrepresented youth and provide opportunities for them to achieve their full potential."

Codingville provides foundational knowledge in digital skills development, which is a precursor to MindFuel's more advanced youth innovation programs, such as edacity, which is focused on building Canada's youth innovation pipeline to develop today's students into tomorrow's STEM leaders and entrepreneurs.

"We are delighted that robogarden.ca continues to provide the technology platform for MindFuel in CanCode 3.0. New features in Codingville will allow students to form teams and create coding learning challenges to solve working together," says Dr. Mohamed Elhabiby, CEO, RoboGarden. "This model further promotes team building, problem solving, entrepreneurship and furthers student engagement. By completing their training through a collaborative environment and socialization, students achieve the learning outcomes tied to current and future digital skills, which also support recovery from restrictions posed by the pandemic."

Innovation will be a critical factor in achieving a durable, inclusive, and diversified economic recovery for Canada. MindFuel is proud to be paving the way for this new future of work and leveraging the innovation mindset in young Canadians to drive economic growth now and into the next generation.  

About MindFuel

The MindFuel Foundation is a registered charitable organization committed to creating young innovators. Since 1990, we have been developing and distributing captivating, high-quality, 21st century programs that ignite a passion for science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) innovation in students of all ages. The programs are technology based and technology infused and are developed to serve both in-classroom and extracurricular learning. To date, MindFuel has invested over $110M into Canada's innovation ecosystem in over 1,600 communities. It serves underrepresented youth populations including Indigenous students, girls in STEM, economically disadvantaged, remote/rural and newcomers to Canada.

MindFuel also delivers eLearning programming through its wholly owned subsidiary, Wonderville Enterprises Ltd., which reaches hundreds of thousands of teachers, students and parents each year in every province and territory, and supports over 600,000 learning sessions annually in Canada, and over 6,000,000 globally. Since inception, MindFuel has reached over 147,000,000 youth in over 190 countries with its online learning programs.

For more information on programming, please visit mindfuel.ca.

SOURCE MindFuel Foundation

Media inquiries: Paula Worthington, For MindFuel, [email protected], [phone]