Delhi Deputy CM Manish Sisodia launches coding campaign

Delhi Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia launched a CODE-A-THON campaign on Thursday in which over 12,000 government school students to take part.

"We started coding project in January this year in collaboration with SheCodes foundation where 870 girl students have been given training till now. Due to the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic, we decided to make it online. Now, we envision this programme to become even bigger," Sisodia said at the launch of the campaign at Veer Savarkar Sarvodaya Kanya Vidyalaya, Kalkaji.

At the launch event, six students presented their animated videos which they made from scratch on their smartphones on various topics such as 'good touch-bad touch', 'saving the environment', 'beti padhao, beti bachao' and public awareness about the coronavirus, among others.

"Steve Jobs once said coding is the new generations' liberal art. It is not about programming, designing, or creating some videos, it is about creating art. Coding helps you to think, that is why it is important to learn to code. Today, I could see how it is enabling our school children to start thinking. There was a girl who made a video on early childhood marriage where she mentioned that the girl was helpless," Sisodia said.

"While watching the video a thought crossed my mind that now she will not be helpless, she will be able to code. We endeavour to make coding a language so accessible that can be used on a day-to-day basis, like Hindi, English or any other language," he added.

As part of the CODE-A-THON campaign, students will go through self-learning modules on coding and will get an opportunity to practise it. They will take part in various quizzes and based on that, they will jump to the next level. There will be a grand finale in December where students will get an opportunity to showcase their projects.