Template Letter for Acquiring Mentors from Colleges and Universities

Template Letter for Mentors from Universities
Below is a template letter for acquiring mentors from colleges and universities. Feel free to edit it as you see fit. You can alter it also to send to local tech businesses to try and find some mentors there also.

Hi (NAME),

(YOUR NAME) here from CoderDojo *****. I’m mailing you about recruiting technical and admin volunteers and mentors from ***(COLLEGE/BUSINESS)***

About CoderDojo - http://coderdojo.com/

CoderDojo is a non-profit volunteer-led community of free programming clubs for young people. At a Dojo, young people between 7 and 17 learn how to code, develop websites, apps, programs, games and explore technology using MIT Scratch, HTML, Javascript, Python and more! There is a focus on community, peer learning and self led learning with an emphasis on helping others and showing how coding is a force for change in the world!

As you can imagine the popularity of CoderDojo has grown massively. As of March this year there are over 345 Dojos either actively running or in planning in 38 countries that reach over 12,000 children a month. At the moment, the demand for places at a CoderDojo exceeds some Dojos capacity to provide them and as a result we are looking for mentors.

LINK: http://youtu.be/HntLmTymmyc

We were wondering if you could send out a CoderDojo mentor call to the ***(COLLEGE/BUSINESS) (staff/student population), who have some coding knowledge and would like to improve their coding ability and add CoderDojo mentoring to their list of skills.

Why Volunteer / Mentor?

From Mentoring students will learn several new skills and practical experience to add to their CV:

Communication Skills - Improved from their interaction with mentors and young people. Networking - Giving them the opportunity to meet and develop contacts with IT professionals. Develop Programming Skills - When mentoring they will be challenged technically as each Dojo covers several topics. This will improve their current skills and help them develop new ones. Local Community and Youth Work - Mentoring will give them experience working with young people while helping out and giving back to their local community.

Any ***students/staff*** who would like to mentor at a CoderDojo can find and contact their local Dojo by searching via our Dojo listing website:

http://zen.coderdojo.com/

Or if you have any questions about getting involved you can contact us directly:

info@coderdojo.com

Please note: That CoderDojo best practice encourages that all CoderDojo volunteers and mentors undergo a garda vetting background check. This can be done via the Dojos local volunteer centre.

Thank you for reading this. Please don't hesitate to contact me if you have any questions or thoughts.

Kind Regards,

(DOJO NAME)