BCB Foundation Summer Camp

For our first Summer Camp we partnered with VGI (the Videogame Institute) and the Black Student Fund in welcoming 13 young people to learn and explore the beginnings of coding through video game creation. This camp was created in response to the underrepresentation of minorities in the STEM fields, particularly coding. The camp taught the basics of programming including: variables, certain Python types, loops (often called repeat loops), conditionals, functions and classes. The camp also provided a breakfast snack and lunch, as well as a Chat and Chew series of speakers on technology careers.

Below is an summary of camp day 3:

Day 3 of the Ben’s Chili Bowl Foundation Summer Camp was excellent. Today, they worked on conditions in coding. They were introduced three new things: conditionals, embedding the conditionals inside each other, and mixing loops and conditionals. Additionally, we have two kids, Gabriel and Tsion, who gave us reviews on two popular video games, “Fortnite” and “Nelly.” We also learned that we have some bilingual students in the class. Five of speak Amharic (the native language in Ethiopia) and one speaks Spanish. Carl Blake, a member of the Ben’s Chili Bowl Foundation stopped by to visit and talk with the students. Eventually, they took a break to have lunch catered by the amazing Ben’s Chili Bowl.

The camp ended with a lunch and graduation ceremony at Ben’s Chili Bowl where several members of the Ali family spoke and certificates of participation were given to each graduate.

We look forward to hosting another BCBF Summer Coding and Videogame Camp in the future.