The Scratch Foundation, a nonprofit dedicated to providing young people with digital tools and opportunities to imagine, create, share, and learn, announced today that Google has granted $500,000 to support the Foundation’s efforts to expand access to creative learning and coding opportunities to educators and children around the world.   

This generous grant will enable the Scratch Foundation to reach more educators with free or low-cost learning and training opportunities, including with its upcoming global annual Scratch Conference. Last year, the Scratch Conference was attended by more than 1,800 educators from all over the world, translated into seven languages, and made available for free on the Foundation’s YouTube channel.  

The grant will also support the Foundation in its ongoing efforts to make its coding platforms—Scratch, which crossed 100 million registered users last year, and ScratchJr—more accessible to children of all abilities and to increase safety measures.  

“We are grateful to Google for this generous grant, which will enable us to empower educators and children around the world with the tools and resources they need to learn and create with Scratch and ScratchJr,” said Mindee Barham, Co-Executive Director of the Scratch Foundation. “Thanks to Google’s ongoing support, we’re creating a more inclusive and accessible online coding community for underserved populations.”  

With this support, the Foundation will continue to grow its Scratch Education Collaborative—an international network of more than 100 education partners committed to bringing coding opportunities to historically underserved populations in 32 countries.  

“We believe that children everywhere should have access to high-quality educational opportunities,” said Shanika Hope, Director of Education for Social Impact at Google. “We are proud to support the Scratch Foundation and are grateful for their efforts to help more children learn computing skills—from providing educators with coding tools and resources to directly teaching students critical skills like creativity and technological literacy.”  

With this grant, the Scratch Foundation is poised to continue providing a platform for millions of young people from all backgrounds with the opportunity to develop their voices and express themselves by making their own creations. The Foundation looks forward to continuing its collaboration with Google and other partners to build a movement for creative learning through coding—so children everywhere can become creative thinkers and be prepared for the future.