From Hamburg to Salzburg: How the Hacker School is breaking international ground TUTECH

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From Hamburg to Salzburg: How the Hacker School is breaking international ground

By 2030, the Hacker School aims to have reached 1,000,000 children and young people with its programming workshops

The Hacker School gets children and young people interested in programming. Low-threshold courses are designed to give young people, especially girls and teenagers from socio-economically disadvantaged backgrounds, an insight into programming before they decide on a career. By involving companies, schools, networks and politicians, this goal becomes a task for society as a whole. The founder’s motto: “If you’re not afraid of your goals, you can leave it at that”. As this model is so successful in Germany, founder Julia Freudenberg would also like to inspire children and young people in other regions with her Hacker School. Due to the linguistic similarities, Austria comes to mind first.

The Enterprise Europe Network (EEN) Hamburg Schleswig-Holstein made contact with the Hacker School in February

The Enterprise Europe Network (EEN) Hamburg Schleswig-Holstein made contact with the Hacker School in February and founder Julia Freudenberg talked about her thoughts on scaling the business model internationally. Tim Zebahl is part of this EU network for the promotion of small and medium-sized enterprises and is active and well connected in the Social Economy and Proximity Sector Group. After detailed consideration, Julia chose Salzburg as the first international location for the Hacker School and Tim put Julia in touch with his Austrian EEN colleague Romana Schwab from Innovation Salzburg. In order not only to found Hackerschool Austria, but also to set up its business model in Austria, the non-profit limited company needed cross-industry contacts with companies that have their own IT departments. The voluntary commitment of IT employees is necessary in order to run the programming courses at schools. Experience has shown that if companies also provide training in this area themselves, they are particularly committed to inspiring the young talent of tomorrow for this business area. Romana Schwab: “We were able to network the Hacker School very quickly with various players from the business world, but also with the Salzburg STEM Initiative, which in turn established contact with the state and the schools.”

“Setting up as a non-profit organisation has a completely different meaning and perception in Germany than in Austria, even though we speak the same language. And having a local contact person where I can get reassurance has been very valuable.”

Julia Freudenberg, founder of Hacker School

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