The BC Newcomer Camp is a registered Canadian charity that operates free programs for recently arrived refugee children and youth. For newcomer refugees who were forced to leave their home countries due to persecution, war, or violence, it is difficult to adjust to places where they must practice unfamiliar languages and customs. By providing free educational programs in English, as well as the native languages of our attendees, we hope to foster new interests and hobbies for children while helping them adjust to their new home in Canada. 

With funding from the SFU Student-Community Engagement Competition, we aim to host a new course to teach Raspberry Pi fundamentals to school-aged, newcomer refugee children. CanaKit has kindly donated Raspberry Pis to us, accompanied with course outlines from the Raspberry Pi Foundation that are specifically geared towards teaching children. We will hire SFU’s engineering and computing science students as qualified instructors for this new program, helping to bridge the access gap to STEM education for refugee newcomer children and providing paid career-relevant experience for the instructors.