Scratch Programs Receive Strong Support from the LEGO Foundation with $5M Grant to Provide Young People with Free Creative Learning Opportunities

BOSTON, MA. July 7, 2022 — Scratch, the world’s largest free creative coding platform and community for young people and educators, has received a $5 million COVID Relief Support Grant from the LEGO Foundation. Scratch will use the grant to amplify its strategic plans to reach young people and educators everywhere with creative learning and coding education and to drive scale in supporting families, students, and educators to emerge stronger than ever after COVID-19.

The pandemic impacted education everywhere – early childhood enrollments were down, schools across the world had to deal with closures, and educators and school districts were – and continue to be – significantly impacted by staffing issues. The financial stress and uncertainty, not to mention the global health emergency, have placed a heavy burden on families and children. The LEGO Foundation’s COVID Relief Grant will help in the effort to ensure more young people and educators, especially those that have been most impacted, have access to creative coding education. 

Scratch Will Continue Making Free Creative Coding Accessible to Everyone

The LEGO Foundation’s funding provides Scratch with greater organizational and technical capacity to advocate for learning through play and make creative learning and coding more accessible for young learners everywhere. This will be achieved through four main activities:

• Improve online tools and structures to ensure safe, equitable use of Scratch
• Lower the technological floor so the quality of hardware does not limit a child’s access or experience
• Invest in ScratchJr and improve access for young learners age 5-7 years
• Prepare for a user impact study to identify how using the Scratch platform affects students and teachers

“Scratch has always aimed to create equitable opportunities for young people who have been excluded from creative learning opportunities,” said Shawna Young, Executive Director at the Scratch Foundation. “We now have an opportunity to bring structural reform and change to educational systems that have viewed creative learning and critical thinking as privileges for some, not rights for all. Thanks to this generous grant from the LEGO Foundation, Scratch will be positioned to expand our Tech & Play initiative, which supports transformative educational change by developing and promoting playful, creative approaches to coding.”

LEGO Foundation Grant Will Have Lasting and Sustainable Effects 

Scratch is the world’s largest coding community for children, impacting young people in nearly every country in the world. The LEGO Foundation grant will allow Scratch to expand its focus on equity, inclusivity, and access. The two main expected results from the LEGO Foundation grant address reach and learning: 

• Reach
  • Scratch will be able to reach young people who do not currently have access to the Scratch and ScratchJr platforms by meeting the growing data privacy expectations in schools and by developing applications that are effective on lower cost devices.
  • The Scratch online community (nearly 300,000,000 active users in 2021) will benefit from the implementation of improved moderation.

• Learning

• • The organization will increase its knowledge and expertise in areas of data privacy, technological accessibility, and culturally mindful and scalable moderation.
  • Improvements of Scratch’s infrastructure will continue to protect data and privacy of all users and provide multiple paths of engagement that bridge gaps in technological access.

“We are at a transformational moment for educational systems everywhere. This donation builds on the LEGO Foundation’s core values of finding creative solutions to the difficult challenges, caring for children and the communities they live in, and the power of collaboration to address the challenges, and opportunities, posed by the COVID-19 pandemic,” said Anne-Birgitte Albrectsen, Chief Executive Officer, LEGO Foundation. “Together we need to make a leap in playful learning, creating a future that promotes inclusive education, lifelong learning opportunities for all children, and where holistic skills and innovation are central. We call on the private sector, philanthropic organizations, governments and other donors to donate generously to the global COVID-19 response. No one is safe until everyone is safe.”

Join the fun at Scratch, and experience a new way to learn creatively. Visit https://scratch.mit.edu/ 

The LEGO Foundation 

The LEGO Foundation shares the mission of the LEGO Group: to inspire and develop the builders of tomorrow. The Foundation, which owns 25% of the LEGO Group, is dedicated to building a future in which learning through play empowers children to become creative, engaged, lifelong learners. Under the ownership model, a portion of profits is used to fund research projects, activities, and partnerships. In 2021, for example, the LEGO Foundation provided grants of DKK 2.8 billion (USD 443.9 million) to initiatives that help children reach their full potential through play. The LEGO Foundation works in collaboration with thought leaders, influencers, educators, and parents, aiming to redefine play, reimagine learning, and equip, inspire, and activate champions for play. www.learningthroughplay.com

The Scratch Foundation 

The Scratch Foundation is a non-profit dedicated to providing young people with digital tools and opportunities to imagine, create, share, and learn about the world of technology and coding. Through innovation and collaboration, the Scratch Foundation spreads creative, caring, collaborative, and equitable approaches to coding and learning worldwide. Scratch is a free website, app, interactive coding platform, and global online community that was developed by the Lifelong Kindergarten Group at the MIT Media Lab in 2003. The platform provides millions of young people from all backgrounds with the opportunity to develop their voices and express themselves by creating their own stories, games, and animations. The Scratch Education Collaborative (SEC) is an initiative that supports and engages participating organizations from around the world in a two-year collaborative cohort experience to strengthen their commitment to and implementation of equitable creative computing.