YNAP supports Hour of Code with fashion hackathon for London children

A group of local girls aged 15 t0 18 will head to Yoox Net-A-Porter Group's West London tech hub tomorrow to a take part in a special fashion hackathon, as part of the online luxury group's commitment to the Hour of Code initiative.

The group will learn how to code the design of a t-shirt, inspired by brands sold on NET-A-PORTER and MR PORTER. YNAP developers will also be delivering inspirational talks and showing the students what a typical morning in a busy technology office looks like, offering them an inside look at projects and activities various YNAP teams are working on.

This is the third year that YNAP has supported Code.org's Hour of Code initiative, which is the biggest technology learning event worldwide aimed at expanding participation in computer science. As well as the London fashion hackathon tomorrow it is staging events for younger children in its Italian tech hub in partnership with Fondazione Golinelli.

These Hour of Code sessions are the latest events in the digital education programme that YNAP runs in partnership with Imperial College London and Fondazione Golinelli in Italy. Since 2016, more than 5,400 young people between the ages of 3 to 18 have participated. In 2018 alone, more than 3,400 young people have been trained, with 70% taking part in the Imperial Codelab classes being female.

The learning activities for this Friday’s session in London have been designed by the "Imperial Codelab powered by YNAP" team, – a joint initiative between YNAP and Imperial College London which has been teaching the basics of coding to under-represented groups, with a focus on girls.

Deborah Lee, Chief People Officer at YNAP said: “As an online luxury fashion retailer, our business depends on hiring the very brightest digital talent. Equipping young people with the skills they need is a way for us to widen our future pool of talent while in turn boosting the wider digital economy as a whole. We are proud that our digital education programme has now reached over 5,400 children and we’re looking forward to inspiring more young people, especially girls, to unlock their creativity through tech in 2019.”

Susan Eisenbach, Professor of Computing, Imperial College London added: “Through Imperial CodeLab powered by YNAP, we hope to inspire the next generation of tech innovators and attract more girls to the tech industry. 67% of the students attending these classes feel inspired to study Computer Science at GCSE level, this is real testament to what can be done when exploring coding through a creative approach, such as the lens of fashion."