Member Article

Crowded-funded coding project for young people tops £20,000

Minister for Civic Society, Nick Hurd, MP has presented a cheque for £20,000 to a project that teaches young people coding.

Emma Mulquenny of Young Rewires State, was presented with the cheque at The Hub in Westminster.

The money was raised through Peoplefund.it, a crowdfunding website created by KEODigital, the makers of Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s Fish Fight, River Cottage and energyshare.

Young Rewired State, asked the public to back them in order to hold a Summer ‘Festival of Code’ at Bletchley Park where kids would be taught to code and get help and support from leading edge mentors and coders.

138 people backed them, following support from Stephen Fry and Martha Lane Fox, who tweeted about the bid.

Emma Mulqueeny, founder and organiser says, ’ We are unbelievably thrilled to have successfully raised the funding for Young Rewired State 2012 through peoplefund.it.

“It has been a thrilling ten weeks with tweets from the likes of Martha Lane-Fox and Stephen Fry helping us gallop to the end, and a final boost from SendGrid taking us over the line.

“Now we have wrung our friends, family and social networks dry of all spare cash, we can focus on making this wonderful community proud by delivering the best YRS yet and getting as many young coders as we can find joining in this National festival of code.”

Nick Hurd, MP, Minister for Civil Society, said: “I am delighted to present this cheque to Young Rewired State on behalf of the people who backed them on peoplefund.it.

“This has been made possible by the Government’s Innovation in Giving Fund, which has invested in Peoplefund.it. It’s fantastic to see such a fantastic result.

“We very much want to see more great business ideas and enterprises benefit and flourish through this kind of support.”

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Tom Keighley .