And now for our next project: Raspberry Jam Fiji

shows computer mouse, leads and memory cards in a box — Mice, SD cards and HDMI cables. Vital kit if you’re working with Raspberry Pi

image of mice, SD cards & HDMI cables — First of the kit to arrive. We saved a lot of our budget by buying from Chinese suppliers.

Picture this: we’d only just finished developing and running the successful education programme for Brighton Digital Festival 2016 – but in a fit of ambition decided to plan global domination with a project in the South Pacific.

The People In IT team have submitted an Innovate UK Global Collaboration bid to bring Raspberry Pi, BBC Microbits and Minecraft to Fiji, where we’ve got family connections.

We’re trying to raise money for the project – how much though? Our target expressed as binary is 11100001000 – which is £1800.00 or $2300.00 (which is 10011111100.) We’ve launched our fundraising page which is called “Get Fiji’s young people coding with @RaspberryPi.” Please share the news and support us. (N.B. The fundraiser is now closed)

We want to fund 50 of these:

Raspberry Pi model B+
mouse
flexible keyboard
HDMI cable
Book: Adventures in Raspberry Pi by Carrie Ann Philbin (If you have a 1st edition you no longer want, let us know)

Each kit costs £35

We are planning three Raspberry Jams to which approximately 90 young people in Fiji will have the opportunity to attend. Barclays Innovation, via our good friends at Barclay’s Digital Eagles in Brighton, have kindly supported us with 50 BBC Microbits to be used with the Raspberry Pi.

We’ll be adding in reports below about our fundraising progress

Update: 17 October 2016. Thanks to four generous donors, we are at 4 complete kits, plus the Microbits from Barclays UK. The fundraiser will end at the beginning of November to give us time to buy the components – Please support us on Generosity fundraising platform. (N.B. Fundraising page now closed)

Update: 2 November 2016. We now have enough funding for five kits and some of the equipment has started to arrive. We’ve got fingers crossed for the funding decision from Innovate UK, due on Friday 4 Nov. After initial communication with the Education Minister in Fiji, we’ve arranged meetings with him for December. This is a really exciting time for us and we are hoping that using Raspberry Pi to support coding and other digital literacy work in the region will have a real impact.