In 2022, a ninth-grader from Redmond High School, Shrey Shah, with a clear path toward a career in computer science, noticed a gap in coding education within elementary and middle schools and a lack of advanced classes in his high school.
This realization was the seed that sprouted an initiative: providing free, live, online coding education across the Pacific Northwest, preparing students in elementary to high school for coding competitions, courses and job opportunities.
With co-founder Eric Gee and three other ninth-grade students from Redmond High School, along with their parents serving as the board of directors, the 501(c)(3) tax-exempt nonprofit Redmond Coding Association (RCA) launched in the summer of 2022 with a series of courses.
Since the organization began, the RCA has provided online events for elementary school students, including introduction classes with coding programs such as Python and Scratch.
Introducing Python to the course material is when the RCA hit its first milestone, Shah said, and classes began to grow from 15 to over 115 people.
Courses offered by RCA cater to various levels and age groups, covering a spectrum of programming techniques from basic to advanced. Topics include robotics, animation, artificial intelligence and game and website development.
Additional courses provide advanced coding lessons for middle and high school students, preparing them for coding competitions such as the USA Computing Olympiad and hackathons.
Currently, RCA courses use free coding programs. In the coming months, Shah said they will use a portion of their donations to purchase paywalled coding programs for courses, which students will be able to use for free while attending the class. Since the organization’s inception, it has received over $6,000 in funding through private donors.
The RCA also provides career development courses instructed by technology professionals and college students, with volunteers from companies like Amazon, Meta and Microsoft, and universities like Princeton, Yale and the University of Washington, majoring in computer science.
When the five executive board members began the RCA, Shah said they did not have a clear vision of how their organization would stand out against the many other coding organizations offered online until they decided to integrate environmental initiatives in 2023.
“Our mission is focused toward a waste-to-education initiative, which is pretty unique to our organization,” Shah said.
This initiative involves the RCA hosting in-person events where people can drop off old computers, desktops and other electronics at a designated location.
The RCA volunteers salvage old computer parts from the e-waste drive for a Computers 101 course series. The series educates students on each component of a computer, how it works, and how to use each piece to build a computer. Volunteers donate the remaining e-waste to Goodwill.
Since starting the waste-to-education initiative, the organization has held two events in Redmond. The first event received 800 pounds of e-waste, and the second received over 2,000 pounds of e-waste.
“Some volunteers can now drive because we’re juniors, so as the e-waste started coming, we had to go to Goodwill instantly, drop off the waste and come back. There was always a car cycling,” Shah said. “Even after [the second event], we had to take six containers home full of waste, which is a crazy number.”
As RCA expands, with over 25 volunteers and mentors and 2,400 members, the organization plans to offer more online courses and host e-waste across the Eastside and Seattle in 2024, alongside a summer hackathon.
Shah said he was inspired after attending a hackathon and wanted to “go big or go home” as the board members approached their final year of high school.
“We had so much fun. We stayed up the entire night because one of our programs needed debugging, but it was such a fun experience with all the food, the music, all that stuff,” Shah said. “So I want other people to have the experience in elementary and middle school.”
Although details have yet to be established, the organization aims to host around 200 to 300 people at the hackathon in July or August.
Although the board members will be gearing up for college next year, the organization will continue to grow its initiatives.
“We see all these founders, they create such a good initiative, and then when they graduate, they just use it for their college application…we don’t want to do that with RCA,” Shah said.
The board members plan to assume the role of the board of directors and appoint other students to their current roles.
“We want to keep the power with us still because we are the first people who saw the vision of the organization,” Shah said. “If we don’t have people with the same vision as us, the organization is just going to dissolve in a couple of years.”
Students interested in attending RCA courses or anyone interested in volunteering or donating can do so on the RCA website.
The five Redmond High School executive board members who began Redmond Coding Association in 9th grade and continue as board members 2 years later. (Photo Courtesy of Redmond Coding Association)
A zoom meeting conducted by a Redmond Coding Association volunteer. Students learn how to used HTML, CSS and JavaScript programs to create websites and engaging projects. (Photo Courtesy of Redmond Coding Association)
