In the summer before heading off to college, many teenagers are lounging poolside or maybe working a part-time job—both respectable options. But 17-year-old Robbie Khazan is focused on a much larger goal: helping kids to code. Khazan, an Arlington High School graduate bound for Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the fall, was recently recognized at the 2022 Diller Teen Tikkun Olam Awards, awarding 15 exceptional teen leaders with $36,000 each in recognition of work they’re doing to build a better world.
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Khazan leads Kiddo Byte, a free program he launched in 2020 that offers equitable access to computer science education. The program, now with about 60 volunteers, teaches hundreds of kids in marginalized communities and provides computers and other tech to those who need it. Through a partnership with MIT, Robbie’s program has expanded to support more kids. He’s now working on expanding to Ukraine.
I caught up with him to chat about the organization and how it’s guided by Jewish values.
So, this is huge! Did you always love computers?
I first started getting into computers as a child. My dad and I were in Florida, and he was showing me Scratch, which is a very visual programming language for kids. It’s drag-and-drop in terms of coding. What you’re coding is immediately shown on the screen. You have a direct result of what you’ve been coding and the hard work you’ve put in. I was immediately hooked. I remember spending the rest of that summer just coding, making random things, exploring on my own. I had friends who were also learning how to do Scratch. I would work with them and get inspiration from them. They were my “teachers,” showing me new ideas and inspiring me.
What led you to start Kiddo Byte?
As I got older, my youngest sister, Ellie, got into Scratch. I wanted her to have that initial spark, but also kind of guide her through it. So I started teaching her and a bunch of her friends every Sunday. We’d work on the kitchen counter and just make a game and get her excited about it. And then I realized, you know what? I want to reach more kids. So I pitched the idea to a bunch of her classmates’ parents.
Wow! You just randomly asked them?
I sent an email to a bunch of my sister’s friends’ parents: “Hey, we’re starting a class!” At this point, I was just teaching a class as a pilot. That class was super successful. And we saw a lot of the kids just really fall in love with coding and take it really far.
How did this become the Kiddo Byte that we all know today? You were even covered in The Boston Globe.
I realized that, as those classes were successful, Kiddo Byte was an opportunity to make an even bigger impact. I started reaching out to local homeless shelters, transitional housing shelters, in Boston. And actually, pretty soon, we partnered with the Brookview House, a transitional housing shelter in Dorchester. And we were teaching online for a while. All of these classes are online, by the way, because this was COVID times. In 2021, we came in-person for the first time and ended up …….
Source: https://www.jewishboston.com/read/local-teen-robbie-khazan-teaches-kids-coding-for-free/