Salesforce’s Virtual Davos Codes Event Links the Sustainability Learnings of Local Davos Students with Students Around the World

At the 2021 World Economic Forum Davos Agenda Week, Switzerland, Salesforce is hosting the annual Davos Codes program virtually. Davos Codes is a learning experience that teaches middle school students computer programming skills and the importance of the Sustainable Development Goals, highlighting the power that technology can bring when used for social good. This will be the sixth year of the program and the first time it will be held in a virtual format.

When we first launched the Davos Codes program at WEF 2015, our goal was to showcase the power of corporate support within communities, enabling youth access to opportunity through technology education. Our commitment to the Davos community has become a year-round program, supporting middle school students with technology, education, and the chance to take part in WEF programming. In 2021, as the world continues to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic, this commitment has never been more important, highlighting the role business has to play in ensuring future generations have access to learning and opportunity.

“Through Davos Codes, we’re enabling youth with the power of technology to make an impact on the world,” said Ebony Beckwith, Chief Philanthropy Officer, Salesforce and CEO, Salesforce Foundation. “This year’s virtual experience will give even more students the opportunity to learn critical skills, and I can’t wait to see what they come up with.”

Last year, Davos Codes empowered more than 50 students from Davos Middle School to build a Climate Action Lab by collecting data on global and local air quality issues, building and coding an air quality monitor, and using data analytics and visualisation to report on their findings. These findings were then used by the Swiss Allergies and Asthma Institute.

In its new virtual format, Davos Codes 2021 will see the students of Davos conduct many of the same climate experiments and measurements conducted at previous Davos Codes programs. The students will analyze the data against previous years’ data to test for the impact of the global and local lockdowns due to the pandemic.

For the first time, we will be linking the students of Davos with schools in Switzerland, India, Japan, and the U.S. Davos students will teach their counterparts to build their own local climate labs, take environmental quality measurements in their regions, and work with them to create analytics and visualizations of those measurements — and ultimately share the results in a global Climate Action Lab.