Result: Experiences and Lessons Learned from Community Engaged Education for Children at Code Club PMF

Code Club PMF is a programming school for children aged 7 to 13, founded as an informal initiative at the Faculty of Science, University in Split, as a part of a large international Code Club community. Since spring 2018, more than 70 in-class workshops were held, and several activities were continued in the online environment during the pandemic. The children learned the basics of programming through various activities such as game development and microcontroller programming in visual programming languages. The club is run by volunteers, a university instructor and an IT professional, along with a number of students from the Faculty of Science who share great enthusiasm and passion for teaching. Almost all activities were conducted without additional financial support and were completely free of charge for the participants. In addition to the regular activities, Code Club PMF was involved in many science popularization events, such as Bebras Challenge, Science Festival, Evening of Mathematics, and a humanitarian event to support the victims of the 2020 earthquake in Croatia. In this paper, we introduce the initiative and describe the examples of best practices. The insights and lessons learned from the Code Club PMF experience can serve as useful guidelines for other community engaged learning initiatives.