Every year,
PayPal hosts a four-week long coding camp across five campuses in the U.S. that is open to kids of PayPal employees, introducing them to coding in fun and creative ways. This year, with nearly 90 employee volunteers and 190 kid participants across San Jose, Omaha, Scottsdale, Austin and Timonium, it resulted in our most successful program yet.
With this being the fourth year of the program, the organizers noticed a big jump in the number of kids that were interested. Aneet Narang, Head of Americas Pricing, and Anita Rao, Director, Enterprise Data Services, led the initiative this year to expand their reach. In addition, leaders across the organizations like Sri Shivananda, CTO, and Jeff Harrell, Head of Online Payments, volunteered their time by giving lectures and interacting with the students.
Check out pictures from the events below.
Kids in Scottsdale create games using Scratch, an educational programming language. After all their hard work they showed off their projects to their peers and parents.
In San Jose, PayPal employee Lenny Markus, Software Development Manager, leads kids on a campus wide scavenger hunt. One object on the list asked kids to pose for a picture in front of a PayPal logo.
CTO, Sri Shivananda talks to kids in San Jose about how he wanted to be barber and pilot when he was young. Other guest speakers over San Jose's four week camp included Jeff Harrell (Senior Director, Online Payments), Alex Picos (VP, Data Transformation), Junaid Razzak (Senior Director, Professional Services), Steve Fusco (VP & GM, Global Distribution) and Erica Gessert (VP, Financial Planning and Analytics).
Kids in Omaha learned about HTML and Python and were introduced to Robotics over the summer.
Kids in Timonium use Scratch, an educational programming language, to learn basic coding skills.
Kids in Austin use a Makey Makey kit to test unusual conductive materials like bananas, plants and cheese sticks.
At PayPal, we encourage innovation at a young age to spread interest in technology among the community. While kids visit their parents at work, they can utilize their time learning at one of the top tech companies in the Silicon Valley.