Zoom has a 100-person limit. Coding Pals needed a bigger room.
A Vancouver nonprofit started by high schoolers now teaches thousands of younger kids to code, for free.
Most startups worry about whether anyone will show up. Coding Pals had the opposite problem on day one.
The Vancouver nonprofit began at the start of the pandemic, when its first class was a single Python course taught by 12 volunteers. More than 100 kids tried to join. As co-founder Kevin Guo told BCBusiness, “On Zoom, the regular plan has a 100-person limit, so not everyone who wanted to join could join.” His verdict: “That was when we realized just how popular this idea was with people.”
Guo started the group as a high school sophomore, alongside co-founder Austin Ma. The idea was plain: Ma said he noticed that public schools offer little computer science, so students who already know how to code would teach those who don’t. Classes are free and aimed at elementary and middle school kids.
From one class to a catalog
By mid-2023, BCBusiness reported, the foundation offered seven classes in languages including Java and web development, plus math competition courses, with 25 student volunteers from across Canada. In summer 2022 it ran a five-day, in-person web development workshop with UBC.
The group’s own site now claims more than 2,500 students taught since March 2020, 75-plus volunteers and a presence in 40-plus cities. It says it is run by high school students and funded by donors, grants and sponsors. Courses cover Python, Java and Scratch, and the site lists registration for its spring term as open under a 2025 copyright notice.
Recognition has followed. In 2022 Techcouver reported that Ma was one of seven national winners of TELUS’s Friendly Future Makers award, picked from hundreds of nominations. At that point the group said it had taught more than 1,600 low-income kids with a team of more than 20 high schoolers, and billed itself as the only nonprofit in Vancouver offering programming lessons at no cost.
The business model is a calendar
Classes run in fall, winter and summer terms, which means the volunteer pipeline has to refill itself as teachers graduate. Guo, by 2023, was doing his part from New Hampshire, where he studies computer science at Dartmouth College and still ran the organization remotely.
His stated goal is simple enough to fit on a poster: “to provide opportunities for anyone who wants to start learning coding as early as they would like.” For a group that began as a Zoom call with a 100-person cap, that is a tidy mission statement.
