Introducing Scratch Ecosystem Leaders!
In 2021, we launched the Scratch Education Collaborative (SEC) with the vision of building an international program that would bring together organizations committed to providing creative coding opportunities to historically underserved populations, including girls and children with disabilities. Participation in the SEC has provided these organizations a community of practice with mission-aligned peers, resources such as grants and collaboration opportunities, and thought partnership with the Scratch Foundation team to support their expansion and to grow the impact of their Scratch implementation throughout their communities. The Scratch Foundation is committed to deepening and sustaining our dedication to supporting localized approaches to creative coding with Scratch through an ecosystem approach led by SEC members who are uniquely positioned to help us engage even more children around the world.
Our model is inspired by one of the organizations piloting this new program: Brazilian Creative Learning Network. Like their ecosystem model, Scratch Ecosystems are networks of SEC organizations in a specific geography that prioritize localized collaboration, advocacy with in-country educational stakeholders, and leveraging of collective resources to expand the reach of equitable creative learning approaches using Scratch and ScratchJr. We’re excited to announce the six inaugural Ecosystem Leaders, who have piloted this model with the Scratch Foundation: Barefoot Computing at Schools (UK), the Brazilian Creative Learning Network (BCLN), Quest Alliance (India), STEAM For Vietnam (Vietnam), STEM Impact Center Kenya (Kenya), STEM NOLA (Southern US).
The Scratch Team asked our Ecosystem Leaders to share what this opportunity means to them. Learn more about these leaders and the dynamic work they are doing to support educators and children in their local communities and beyond.
Barefoot Computing at School — United Kingdom, SEC Cohort 2
Barefoot Computing was set up in 2014 to prepare primary school teachers for the changing computing curriculum, with funding from the UK’s Department for Education. Barefoot supports primary school teachers across the UK to deliver the computing curriculum through free workshops and online resources. In their “Programming in Scratch” workshop for Primary school teachers, Barefoot highlights the application of computational thinking skills in programming, with interactive code reading and writing activities. By defining programming as a 2-step process of algorithm design followed by coding in a language such as Scratch, they introduce the big 3 constructs of sequence, repetition and selection. Through their participation in the SEC, Barefoot created a new “Accessible Adventures in Coding” curriculum: 6 cross-curricular lessons highlighting the importance of accessibility in digital making. Whilst exploring AI & machine learning, pupils are guided through the design and creation of their own accessibility tools, through coding projects in Scratch Jr and Scratch.
What does creative learning mean to you?
Creative learning is education being “playful” through pedagogy. Getting hands-on and creating pieces of work through engaging projects and challenges encourages tinkering, critical thinking, collaboration and self-expression, whilst developing essential problem-solving life skills. At Barefoot we support primary school teachers and pupils to understand key Computer Science concepts through fun, adaptable activities and digital games that feed the imagination and bring computing to life beyond the classroom. Using unplugged resources as well as digital technologies, we create a learning pathway towards active contribution in a digital world.
How will being a Scratch Ecosystem Leader help you impact more kids and educators in your region?
Through partnership with Scratch Foundation, Barefoot aims to expand impact in collaboration with the Computing at School network of educators and localized communities of practice across the UK. By leveraging the resources of local Computing at School community leaders, we can co-create equitable in-person creative learning and development experiences for teachers using Scratch and ScratchJr, such as regional conferences, bespoke workshops, local meetups and specialized events. We look forward to working with Scratch Ecosystem Leaders worldwide, as well as in-country educational stakeholders and subject specialists, to connect, share experience, and collaborate to increase the scope of opportunities which build teaching subject knowledge and confidence in computing, for the benefit of all primary pupils.
STEM Impact Center Kenya — Kenya, SEC Cohort 1
STEM Impact Center is a youth development nonprofit organization based in Kenya that focuses on bringing high-quality STEM education to the local communities. Their deep connections to peer organizations, the Kenyan government, and corporate partners continues to support them in their goal to enhance entrepreneurship, innovation, employment creation, and youth empowerment through STEM education across Kenya.
What does creative learning mean to you?
Creative learning is an approach that gives our learners a unique multifaceted approach that takes into consideration each learner’s unique perspectives, and locally available materials to promote knowledge and skill-building. Teachers can make use of different materials to enhance their teaching practices following the introduction of Coding in the national curriculum in Kenya through the Competency Based Curriculum (CBC), which embeds Scratch and ScratchJr from grade 5. We use Scratch and ScratchJr as key resources to build the capacity of learners and educators to enhance their 21st-century skills and skills in digital literacy, creative coding, literacy, and numeracy.
How will being a Scratch Ecosystem Leader help you impact more kids and educators in your region?
Being the Scratch Ecosystem Leader in Kenya will enable us to work collaboratively with other organizations in the learning-with-technology ecosystem, therefore impacting more children and educators. We will provide an enabling environment for organizations to share and improve learning materials and tools, enhancing close liaison with the Ministry of Education to support in the implementation of the Competency Based Curriculum (CBC) in Kenya. We will also support other micro-organizations to grow their programs in creative coding and to enhance how we track the impact of our work as a collective ecosystem.
Quest Alliance — India, SEC Cohort 1
Quest Alliance is the SEC’s first program participant from India. They are a nonprofit that equips young people with 21st century skills by enabling self-learning. The design learning experiences that inspire and empower both educators and learners in their local communities. Working with over 1,000 schools and 180,000 students, they have used Scratch as the backbone of their computational thinking programs. Scratch is used as a low-floor entry to coding to help children overcome their fear of programming while also helping them discover a creative outlet to express their thoughts, feelings and emotions. Additionally, Quest Alliance embeds elements of tinkering into their programming, including in ideathons and hackathons. These events encourage participants to experiment, explore, and iterate on their ideas, using Scratch to rapidly prototype and test their concepts.
How will being a Scratch Ecosystem Leader help you impact more kids and educators in your region?
Our work as a Scratch Ecosystem Leader has given birth to a grand collaborative idea in the form of the Indian Equitable Learning Ecosystem (IELE). The IELE, inspired by the Brazilian Creative Learning Network, aims to take computational thinking, creative learning and equity to the remotest of communities through a deep grassroots Partner network that aims to redefine the education landscape across India. In its 1st year, the collaborative started with 8 organizations from across 6 States of India, reaching out to over 15 thousand students from marginalized communities through in-school and out-of-school interventions.
STEAM for Vietnam — Vietnam, SEC Cohort 2
STEAM for Vietnam is a nonprofit organization that aims to bring world-class and free STEAM classes to millions of Vietnamese learners through online and hybrid classes. They have a network of over 200 volunteers, including Vietnamese experts, students, and international students around the world. They are one of the leading organizations in Vietnam focused on STEAM education, and have a large reach of learners and educators across the country. They’re our first collaborator from Vietnam. To date, they have taught Scratch to over 50 thousand students in the last four years and to 11 thousand teachers through their Train the Trainer programs in 2023 and 2024.
What does creative learning mean to you?
The Vietnam Ministry of Education has called for a transformation toward student-centered education, where students are at the heart of the learning process. In Vietnam, traditional classrooms have long emphasized lecturing, leaving many students disengaged and unenthusiastic. Creative learning is crucial because it leverages students’ expertise, using their passions to motivate and inspire them. It involves viewing learning as a process of play and exploration. By engaging students in group projects with their peers, we help them develop multidisciplinary knowledge and essential 21st-century skills, such as problem-solving and collaboration. For teachers, Scratch has been a revelation. They’ve discovered how it can be used for multidisciplinary learning, making lessons interactive and gamified. Teachers use Scratch to create classroom demonstrations, educational games for students to review lessons, and projects that let students showcase their understanding of the content. Computer Science teachers especially appreciate Scratch for its ability to simplify complex coding concepts in an engaging and understandable way. We, STEAM for Vietnam, believe that empowering teachers to use creative learning frameworks in their classrooms is crucial. It not only makes education more enjoyable but also prepares students for future careers.
How will being an Scratch Ecosystem Leader help you impact more kids and educators in your region?
We are incredibly grateful for the opportunity to become a Scratch Ecosystem Leader, as it aligns perfectly with our mission to educate 5 million students in Vietnam about STEM for free. As an Ecosystem Leader, we receive direct support from the Scratch Foundation, enhancing our efforts to create a Creative Learning environment for students and teachers and encouraging the application of creative learning frameworks in classrooms. We also value the opportunity to join the Scratch conference as facilitators, which helps us maintain and provide follow-up activities for our teacher community, ensuring ongoing support and engagement. Additionally, we greatly appreciate the chance to learn from other Ecosystem Leaders, whose brilliant work and insights have helped us expand and grow our organization. This role enables us to make a greater impact by leveraging these opportunities to reach more students and educators in our region.
STEM NOLA — New Orleans, Louisiana, SEC Cohort 1
STEM NOLA is the leading affiliate of the STEM Global Action movement, and its programs help K-12 children in New Orleans, and across the country, achieve in the Science Technology Engineering and Math (STEM) fields. With an emphasis on reaching under-served communities across the city of New Orleans, STEM NOLA’s greatest strength is that it is designed to be culturally and environmentally relevant. By using local corporate volunteers and college students specializing in STEM to instruct and mentor students through project-based activities and hands-on learning, students in grades K-12 are “Exposed, Inspired, and Engaged” and able to see themselves represented in STEM!
What does creative learning mean to you?
Through our model to “expose, inspire, and engage” youth in hands-on STEM experiences, we are continuing to help them build the communication, collaboration, and critical thinking skills that we know will open up future opportunities in STEM for them. The 4 P’s — passion, peers, projects, and play — are at the core of what STEM NOLA does and can be seen throughout our events and programming. The fifth P, “purpose,” is just as critical as we create experiences that are relevant to the culture and environment that our youth are growing up in.
How will being an Scratch Ecosystem Leader help you impact more kids and educators in your region?
STEM NOLA is committed to meeting the community where they are and making STEM accessible for all. Ecosystem Leaders are instrumental to the SEC’s vision is to create a self-sustaining network that supports equity-centered creative learning & coding experiences across the world. Being an Ecosystem Leader, will support STEM NOLA as we continue to scale community and programmatic opportunities that expose youth and families to STEM and creative coding using Scratch and ScratchJr. We have had the opportunity to facilitate a chat for other SEC organizations and share about our model for facilitating our “STEMfests” and how we focus on localization and collaborating with community stakeholders.
Brazilian Creative Learning Network (BCLN) — Brazil, SEC Cohort 1
The Brazilian Creative Learning Network is a nonprofit organization that unites educators, artists, parents, researchers, entrepreneurs, students and organizations to promote and support hands-on, creative, relevant and inclusive educational practices throughout Brazil. Beginning as a grassroots movement, their mission is to create, support and connect initiatives that make education more creative, enjoyable, relevant, collaborative and inclusive for children and young people across Brazil. Born in 2015 out of the work of the Lifelong Kindergarten group at MIT Media Lab, their work promotes and supports the implementation of playful, creative, personally relevant, and inclusive learning practices in schools and informal education environments throughout Brazil through programs, learning resources, and events.
What does creative learning mean to you? (“you” can be the organization’s leader or your organization as a whole)
As our very name tells, Creative Learning is core to our work. The Brazilian Creative Learning Network (BCLN) has been created as a means to recognize, deepen and amplify creative learning practices in formal, non-formal and informal education settings throughout Brazil. We do that by nurturing a community-centric ecosystem filled with professional development events, campaigns and courses built around the 4 Ps of Creative Learning: Projects, Passion, Peers and Play. Although technology is not essential for Creative Learning, we know that digital tools can dramatically expand the horizons and possibilities of education. In particular, Scratch empowers young people to express themselves and collaborate in ways that would be virtually impossible to do otherwise, helping them understand how computers work, and positioning our students as creators, designers and critical participants of today’s society.
How will being an Scratch Ecosystem Leader help you impact more kids and educators in your region?
Being a Scratch Ecosystem Leader will contribute to our work in many ways, including:
- Providing valuable recognition for our work, which will help open new partnerships and funding opportunities
- Learn about new practices and ideas, both from Scratch Foundation itself, but also from the other key players of the Ecosystem
- Have opportunities to collaborate with other like-minded individuals and organizations in projects that would be hard to implement on our own
- Help influence the future of Scratch based on insights regarding what works and does not work in Brazil
- Moral support and energy to keep fighting!
