Education Japan Project #75180

Give a Child in Japan a Digital Scholarship

by Kids Code Club

Give a Child in Japan a Digital Scholarship

Project Report | Oct 26, 2026
Learning at Their Own Pace, Never Alone

By Koji Kawazoe | Executive Director

Some of the courses children can choose from

Thank you for your interest in our Digital Scholarship. A laptop opens the door. What keeps a child going is a person: someone who looks at what they made and answers back, or someone who shows them where it can lead. Here are two programs that do exactly that.

The Step-Up Course: Choose, Build, and Hear Back

Our free Step-Up Course lets children choose what they want to learn: Minecraft, Scratch, Roblox Studio, JavaScript, 3D design, video, music, or a project of their own. There is no fixed class time. Each child works at their own pace and can try more than one course or switch along the way.

Self-paced does not mean alone. Children can ask questions in each course. When they submit a game, a 3D model, or a video, our staff review every piece and send back comments: what works well, and what they could try next.

Learning materials are easy to find. What is harder to find is someone nearby who can look at the game a child built and give specific advice. For children who are not yet ready to present in front of others at our online after-school club, this is a low-pressure way to share their work and hear back.

Until this year, the course was mainly for children in our Digital Scholarship. This year, for the first time, we opened it to other children connected to Kids Code Club. The spots filled up.

Meeting the People Who Build AI

In August, our IT Career Event invited an engineer who developed electronic instruments and home appliances before moving into AI research. He shared how he loved games as a child and how his path was not a straight line. He showed how a toaster uses a tiny computer to toast bread just right, and how researchers and engineers train AI step by step.

Then the children used AI to make their own quizzes and riddles. They found that AI sometimes gives wrong answers, and that how you ask matters. Even in an age when AI writes the code, he told them, "whether it's what we want is something only we can decide."

One child wrote afterward: "I want to work in design someday. I want to create fresh designs that AI can't beat."

Our Scholarship Today

132 children have received a free laptop through our Digital Scholarship
Our dropout rate is just 9%
More than 30,000 cumulative participants in our free programs

Our IT Career Event is funded by a grant from the Benesse Children's Foundation. Gifts to this project help us keep the rest going year after year: laptops for the next children, staff time to respond to each child's work, and the community the children come back to every week. Thank you for being with them.

With gratitude,
Koji Kawazoe
Executive Director, Kids Code Club

Links:

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Jun 26, 2026
Meet the Kids Now Teaching Other Kids

By Koji Kawazoe | Secretary General

Thank you. Because of you, a new group of children in Japan began their Digital Scholarship this June — and the children who came before them are now teaching it themselves.

A New Class Just Began

This month we welcomed our 2026 cohort. Each child receives a free laptop — often their first computer at home — plus mentors, a learning community, and one-on-one help whenever they get stuck. Every time we open enrollment, far more families apply than we have laptops for; your gift opens the next spot. To date, 107 children have received laptops, our programs have reached 31,203 participants, and our dropout rate is just 9% — because children stay when they feel they belong.

From Learners to Teachers

Here is what your support makes possible. In our online after-school club, we invited the children themselves to teach. At the first session, three kids put up their own signs, opened their own mini-classes, and welcomed about 20 classmates. The adults provided only the space — the children chose the topics, built the materials, and answered every question on the fly. By the next session, the kids who had taught before arrived early to coach the newcomers and calm their nerves. Confidence was passing from one child to the next. One young teacher wrote: "I'm so glad I challenged myself."

In a Parent's Words

"Before, my son wasn't attending school and we were both exhausted. Now he checks the club schedule himself and plans his own day — and most of all, he wants to go. For a child who had stopped going to school, that is a huge change."

With the new cohort underway, our goal is simple: reach more of the children still waiting. If you work at Google or Microsoft, your gift may be eligible for corporate matching — doubling your impact at no extra cost. You can open the door for the next child still waiting.

With gratitude,
Koji Kawazoe
Secretary General, Kids Code Club

Links:

Learn more about Kids Code Club

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