The power of data spread among the young generation of European citizens

The "Open The Data!" event was chosen as the 2021 Meet and Code Winner in the SDG-17 Code for Europe category, as it taught the participants some really practical, digital and business skills that could give them an important competitive advantage on the future job market, while focusing on environmental issues impacting European cities.

The subject of the workshop was really interesting and topical, bringing together young people to learn the practical use of coding in a fun, customised way. Watch our interview with Lorena from Connection4Innovation APS, and see what she's got to say about their event and what made it so special! 

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You will find the full interview here:

• Please, introduce your organization in 1-2 sentences:  

LORENA: Good morning, I’m Lorena and I represent Connection4Innovation. We are a young association which wants to spread IT skills through non-formal education. 

• Describe your event in 1-2 sentences and tell us what makes it special.  

LORENA: With “Open the Data”, we wanted to transfer knowledge, know-how and coding skills in a world in which data are increasingly integrated. We wanted to make young students discover the power of data, making them aware of the possibility to extract valuable information through data preprocessing, manipulation, and visualization in the Python language. 

• Why did you choose to participate in Meet and Code? 

LORENA: Meet and Code for us was a wonderful opportunity to start up our ideas. For a long time, we dreamed of transferring practical IT skills to younger students and Meet and Code was looking for that kind of initiative. 

• Why is it a success? Is it scalable? 

LORENA: It was a remarkable success because of the heterogeneity of the participants. Many of them came from high schools, others from university, but all of them were interested in getting such powerful tools.  

• What are the results of the project in the long-term perspective?  

LORENA: In the long run, our objective is to create a well-structured academy in which everybody who wants to learn more about IT can join. A lab where it is possible to grow and acquire skills that school or university is not able to transfer. A place where great things happen. 

• What gave you the most joy while working on the project this year? How can you motivate others to participate in the 2022 edition?  

LORENA: We got a lot of excellent feedback from our participants, they said that they enjoyed it a lot and learnt so many useful things at the event. So, get ready for our next proposal, we hope to see you soon. Write us if you want to know more! Stay tuned.