The Raspberry Pi Foundation, the United Kingdom charity organization behind the tiny Raspberry Pi computers, announced today that it will be merging with CoderDojo, a coding club for children between 7 and 17 years old.

According to Raspberry Pi Foundation Chief Executive Philip Colligan, the goal behind the merger is to allow the two organizations to “give many more young people all over the world new opportunities to learn how to be creative with technology.”

CoderDojo operates hundreds of clubs around the world that teach kids programming skills, including how to build their own websites, apps and games. The clubs do this by encouraging peer learning, youth mentors and self-led lessons. The charity seems like a good fit for Raspberry Pi, whose mission is to make affordable computer access available around the world. Despite their low cost and small size, Raspberry Pi computers are fairly powerful and versatile, and they have become popular for creative digital projects in robotics, smart home systems and others.

“Raspberry Pi and CoderDojo have each accomplished amazing things over the last six years,” Colligan said in a blog post. “Now, we see an opportunity to do even more by joining forces. Bringing together Raspberry Pi, Code Club, and CoderDojo will create the largest global effort to get young people involved in computing and digital making. We have set ourselves an ambitious goal: to quadruple the number of CoderDojos worldwide, to 5,000, by the end of 2020.”

As part of the merger, Raspberry Pi will become a corporate member of the CoderDojo Foundation, which will continue to exist as an independent charity and will remain headquartered in Dublin, Ireland. Colligan will be joining Coder Dojo’s board as a director. According to Colligan, the merger has not been finalized yet and is still subject to approval by Irish regulators.

The Raspberry Pi Foundation has teamed up with other code schools in the past, such as in 2015 when it merged with the U.K.’s Code Club, another charitable organization that specializes in teaching programming skills to kids. Colligan said that the new merger will combine the resources of both CoderDojo and Code Club to create “the largest global effort to get young people involved in computing and digital making.”

Photo: Andreas_K. Raspberry Pi via photopin (license)