History and Future of Kids Heroes in WordPress

Kids events are not a new thing in the WordCamp and WordPress event space, however, the number of these events happening around the world are on the rise. Kids events focus on teaching children how to become content creators, creative thinkers, and even business owners. Numerous repeat attendees have morphed their personal blogs into businesses and these kids are only 8-13 years old. Kids events provide an opportunity for local communities to foster long term community growth. These events also offer opportunities for a more diverse event in that kids bring a new perspective to any event. WordPress and its surrounding communities have the opportunity to change the lives of kids all over the world.

History of Kids Events

The history of Kids Events is full of many Heroes who have worked tirelessly to ensure that children in our community are included in events. Most of these events happen in tandem with WordCamps, but that is not always the case. Here is the history of most of the Kids Events and the Heroes behind them.

More Kids Event Information

Kids programming with WordPress is here to provide a solid opportunity for minors to be included in the community. The programs offer events, workshops, and inclusion in the ever-growing WordPress community.

The community as a whole has always provided educational and networking events to further personal development. Kids Programming is no different.

Events focus on key skill sets such as public speaking, writing, networking, and communication. Children get to work with peers in exciting and fulfilling ways and leave the events with new friends. These friends often live in various places around the globe and create the opportunity for long-distance friendships fostered through technological resources.

For example, my son lives in Orlando and has friends in Tampa, Jacksonville and even out of state. He keeps in touch through Facebook Messenger or Slack.

The fact is our kids need a fun way to use real-world skills in a non-threatening environment. A place where they won’t be tested and where they can’t fail.

These programs offer just that. With over 40 different volunteers helping to foster this program across the globe it is becoming a WordPress community staple.

There is still much to do. Safety has to be our #1 priority when working with minors and that means keeping things pretty consistent. There is a group of amazing volunteers documenting the process of planning a kids event and class curriculum.

The team is working on checklists and curriculum to make it super easy for a meetup chapter or WordCamp to add a kids event or kids program to their offering.

The future for these programs is looking very bright. There is ever-growing interested in events, and more people wanting to be part of the kids’ event revolution.

You too can be a hero. We need more people to write, edit, translate and test these programs. No experience is necessary and you don’t have to love kids either. This initiative allows so many children from different backgrounds and walks of life to be included in a super caring community. We see kids whose parents are already in the community and also kids who otherwise would never know the community exists. Your time is going to help create the next generation of WordPress! To get involved or update this list of Heroes just email Kids@WordCamp.org.

8 Comments

  1. I’m Cedric, I’m 11 years old and I own 2 WordPress sites and I’m glad that you’re aware of kids like me. One site is a learning website at curiositycounts.org (unfortunately… kind of… uh… broken). Don’t worry. I’m fixing the site. The other website is a WordPress Multisite-based managed WordPress platform that’s 100% free (geschafft.co). Anyways, thank you for thinking about kids like me.

  2. I’m Topher, and I helped at a Kids Camp once. I was a room monitor, wandering around answering questions, getting sticky things unstuck, etc. It was WordCamp Miami 2019.

    I remember it well because there was one particularly intent young man. They were all setting up stores with WooCommerce. I don’t know if this young man was younger than everyone else or simply smaller. While the boys next to him were goofing off and laughing, he was working HARD on his site. When he had questions they were good, deep questions, that showed understanding.

    When we were all done I asked him what he was selling on his store. He said “This is my dad’s invention. He lost his job last year, so he made this thing, and he’s trying to find buyers for it. I built this store for him so that he has one less thing to think about while he takes care of us.”

    …..

    One time when my daughter was 3 or so we were a little short on cash one month. She heard us talking about how to handle it and she went into her bedroom and came out about an hour later with some custom made Dollars. They were cut crudely and colored randomly but they were her way of showing us that she cared, and wanted to help. It was amazing.

    This kid’s website for his dad wasn’t like that. This was the real deal. Everything worked. The only thing it needed was bank info for Stripe. Everything else was done. It was even on decent hosting.

    I’m going to guess this kid was 10-12 years old and WordPress, Free Software, allowed him to make a viable ecommerce platform to help support his family.

    It made me want to cry. I told him he did a great job and to follow up on it and not let it slide. I gave him my card and told him he could ask me questions any time. He never did, but I hope it turned out for him.

    1. Thank you so very much. I updated the article and thank you for all you do for the kids in our comminity!

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