The School of Robotics project, “Children Help Children”, Finalist of the at Meet and Code Awards

In 2021, Scuola di Robotica submitted a project to the Meet and Code awards: the project/event “Children helping children” is now one of the three finalists in the Diversity category.

The project involved hundreds of secondary school students learning online how to design the covers of 3D printed aids for children with agenesia of the upper limbs, using Tinker Cad. The children imagined aids with different shapes and designed them.

Each year the five most creative Meet and Code events promoted by organisations across Europe are selected. The award categories are aligned with five of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of the European Community, and are: Girls do IT! (SDG5), Community (SDG11), Diversity (SDG10), Code for the Planet (SDG13) and Code for Europe (SDG17). In 2021, 142 organisations across Europe were selected.

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Children Helping Children

EPHR estimates that 8.1 out of every 1000 children are born with diseases related to limb failure. Children born with imperfect upper limb development will not be able to perform the functions that will enable their muscular, balance and posture complex development.
In order to avoid the costs and problems of installing complex prostheses, low-cost 3D printed prostheses have been created that can be, as well as frequently changed, customised according to the tastes and wishes of the children.
Scuola di Robotica receives numerous requests for the creation of 3D prostheses.
The project will take place online and will be open to children from various countries including Italy, France, Turkey, Germany, Romania. The main objective is to provide participants with the technical skills to be able to customise prostheses dedicated to children with agenesis and then print them in 3D. We want to involve a lot of children to design and realise the whole customisation part. Children designing for children. The children will use a software with which they will be able to make and test ad hoc customisations. The event will be in the European Robotics Week 2021.

The Finalists in the Categories: Girls Do It! Diversity; Code for the Planet; Community.

Meet and Code

The Meet and Code initiative is promoted by the founding partners SAP, Haus des Stiftens gGmbH and TechSoup Europe with the respective national partners of the TechSoup Europe network. In 2020, the German Federal Ministry of the Interior, Building and Communities (BMI) joined the project as a partner under the German Presidency in the European Union. SAP and BMI make the Meet and Code initiative possible through financial support and other resources made available to non-profit organisations. Haus des Stiftens gGmbH is responsible for the initiative and the selection of events in Germany, Austria and Switzerland, as well as for the overall coordination of the project and the grant procedures by the territorial managers of the TechSoup Europe network. The TechSoup Europe partners are responsible for coordinating the initiative and selecting the events to be subsidised in their respective countries. Meet and Code was developed thanks to the collaboration between Haus des Stiftens and SAP.

Haus des Stiftens, a non-profit organisation operating in Germany, manages the IT portal Stifter-helfen for Germany, Austria and Switzerland. The Stifter-helfen IT portal provides non-profit organisations in these countries with donated products or very favourable conditions from leading IT companies, as well as the know-how required to use these technologies. The IT portal has been active in Germany since 2008, in Austria since 2012 and in Switzerland since 2013.

TechSoup Europe is part of the TechSoup Global Network. With its 24 local partners, TechSoup Europe covers several areas of activity: capacity building, civic engagement, social innovation, digital inclusion, and helps over 400,000 non-profits in 48 European countries to strengthen their capacities and improve their skills. The network provides change leaders with IT products, training and services to help them seize the opportunities of digital transformation to serve their mission and generate social change.