Cognizant and Microsoft share a common purpose to improve everyday life. We kicked off our commitment to the Microsoft Partner Pledge in Sweden by supporting #SkillUpSweden. Here is how our team could see the eagerness among the participating teenagers to learn how to code and build amazing games, apps and websites.
Cognizant in Sweden, Norway, Denmark, and Finland has signed the Microsoft Partner Pledge, which is a network of partners that focuses on four goals:
1. Digital skill-up
2. Diversity and Inclusion
3. Responsible and Ethical AI
4. Sustainability
We kicked off our commitment to the pledge in Sweden by supporting #SkillUpSweden, that focuses on broadening the digital competences across Sweden. The program strengthens Sweden as a country, tech organizations and companies' competitiveness by digitally enabling the youth through this program.
Space Academy is a tech learning hub for youth, aiming to democratize access to knowledge in tech. They organized the week-long Coding Bootcamp powered by Microsoft. Cognizant’s data specialists, marketing and Microsoft Business Group came together supported by Cognizant Outreach to identify our volunteers for the program.
The boot camp was a 6-day introduction to coding. They were introduced to the most attractive languages in programming, and they got trained to apply coding in real projects related to important social issues. The volunteers from Cognizant Outreach consisted of Fredrik Tonn, Siddhartha Singhal and Mithun Redkar. Mithun and Siddhartha, being Python experts, helped the students understand the concepts and apply them effectively.
Mithun shares: “It was very engaging, and we thoroughly enjoyed the camp experience with these young minds who were super amazing! We were glad to share some knowledge with them in their projects. We could see the eagerness and zeal to learn to code and build amazing games, learning apps and websites on current affairs. Some of them had never coded in the past, but they did amazingly over the 1-week camp.”
Fredrik Tonn, one of the other volunteers adds: “I rarely say that I'm inspired by anything but I truly was inspired by the creativity, dedication and openness the kids at the event showed. In just a few days, with no prior experience in coding, the kids have created quite advanced games, some even with multiple levels(!), in Scratch. Space Academy, together with the mentors they invited, have truly created something important for the future generation of coders. It was an honor to get to work with the kids and hear their thought process when coming up with their amazing ideas!”
