The Power of One Hour

Accenture’s #HourofCode numbers are in, and I’m excited to report that we doubled our impact, reaching more than 200,000 students in 56 countries and 204 cities during our Week of Code celebration, Dec 4-10!

A huge shout out to our employees who volunteered to help students complete more than 14,000 hours of coding—and kickstart interest in computer science education for our #FutureWorkforce. See more fun pictures below.

I’m extremely proud of the momentum Accenture has helped create, working alongside other companies, schools and individuals, to get computer science education to students everywhere. Together as a global movement, we’ve helped Code.org reach a cumulative 500 million Hours of Code since the non-profit started four years ago.

Our work doesn’t stop here, and it doesn’t end with one hour or even one week. Our society needs to make an ongoing annual commitment to computer science education. That’s why Accenture teams year-round with organizations like Code.org, Girls Who Code, New York on Tech, Women Who Code, Stemettes and others who are working alongside us to increase access to students around the world.

Speaking of “out of this world,” Accenture’s fun, new AI tutorial was a big hit too, with 38,000 students and adults logging in to help a robot explore a new planet, while providing a simple introduction to AI concepts, such as how to gather training data and change parameters to conduct unsupervised and supervised learning. Our AI tutorial will be available all year long for those of you who still need to complete your pledge or want to take the tutorial to a local school. I say go for it!

The results of this year’s Hour of Code campaign give me great hope that computer science is not only New and Now, but that our momentum will carry us well into the future. Keep up the good work to empower every student in every school to learn to code. Let’s turn one hour of power into an even bigger commitment: Who is up for volunteering one hour per week? Making a monthly commitment to teach computer science to a local after-school program? Or trying an online course in coding yourself? 

I’ll leave you with a few of my favorite pictures from Accenture’s Hour of Code events around the world, starting with a billboard in New York’s Times Square:

Students earn their Certificate of Completion at Baltimore City School

An Accenture senior executive generating pure enthusiasm about coding

More than 60 students participated in Accenture’s Hour of Code in the Philippines

What are you waiting for? Tomorrow’s expert in quantum computing could be learning to code today!