Junior Coding Academy
Greece
Junior Coding Academy (JCA) is an initiative, which offers Scratch programming activities to school students aged 10-16 years of various …
Good practice
Imported
★ 76
★ 56
★ 56
★ 52
TUMO Center for Creative Technologies — Free Extracurricular Tech & Design Education for Teens
Armenia · Yerevan · See the Armenia profile · See the Yerevan profile
Evidence: Quasi-experimental Top 1% 100/100 · Ask Evidence Copilot about this practice
A free, self-directed after-school programme (ages 12-18) teaching coding, robotics, animation, music, film and design across 14 disciplines. An independent Dalberg evaluation found alumni far more likely to pursue tech/creative degrees than peers.
29% vs 8% %
TUMO alumni enrolled in tech/creative-discipline university degrees vs comparison group (as of Dalberg evaluation, July 2023)
24% vs 6% %
TUMO alumni attending top Armenian universities in tech-engineering/creative fields vs comparison group (as of Dalberg evaluation, July 2023)
~35,000 (25,000 in Armenia, 10,000 abroad) students/week
Students reached weekly (2024-2025)
60,000+ people
Total alumni (as of 2024-2025)
Details
- Maturity
- Established
- Promoter
- TUMO Center for Creative Technologies (Simonian Educational Foundation)
- Period
- 2011–present
- Keywords
- digital & creative education, youth skills, coding, design, technology
Context
TUMO is a free, extracurricular technology and design education programme for teenagers aged 12-18, founded in 2011 in Yerevan, Armenia by the Simonian Educational Foundation. It offers self-paced digital learning, hands-on workshops and expert-led labs across 14 disciplines including coding, robotics, game development, animation, filmmaking, music and graphic design.
Objectives
The programme aims to give teenagers open access to creative-technology education outside a fixed classroom curriculum, letting each student choose their own learning path through an open-access digital platform combined with in-person mentoring.
Activities
TUMO combines a self-paced digital learning platform with hands-on workshops and expert-led 'labs'. Armenia now hosts six TUMO centres, and the model has been licensed or replicated in centres across 15 countries, reaching roughly 35,000 students weekly (25,000 in Armenia, 10,000 abroad) and more than 60,000 alumni as of 2024-2025.
Results
An independent impact evaluation by Dalberg International (July 2023) compared TUMO alumni with a matched comparison group and found 29% of TUMO alumni enrolled in technology or creative-discipline university degrees versus 8% of the comparison group, and 24% attended top Armenian universities in tech-engineering or creative fields versus 6% of the comparison group.
Conclusions
TUMO's Yerevan flagship centre won a European Heritage Award / Europa Nostra Award for its architecture and educational model. Replication depends on securing comparable long-term funding and dedicated facilities from a sponsoring partner, which has limited scale-up mostly to cities able to attract one.
Implementation
- Indicative cost
- High (€500k–€5M) — No cost figures given; inferred as high because the model requires a dedicated physical facility and sustained foundation-level funding per centre.
- Time to results
- Long (> 3 years) — Inferred as long: the flagship centre has operated continuously since 2011 (15 years) and reaching current international scale (25 centres, 15 countries) took over a decade.
- Staffing & skills
- Expert-led 'labs' and mentors provide in-person guidance alongside the self-paced digital platform
Conditions for success
- Long-term funding from the Simonian Educational Foundation and local government/private partnerships in each expansion country
- A dedicated physical facility per centre
Common failure modes
- Replication has been limited mostly to cities that can attract a sponsoring partner able to fund comparable long-term facilities and funding
Where it fits
- Governance type
- philanthropic foundation-led, with local government/private partnerships in expansion countries
- Scale
- city-level centres, replicated across 25 centres in 15 countries
- Income level
- not stated in source
Commonly funded by
Philanthropic / foundation funding
Indicative funding routes for practices of this type — always check each programme's current calls and eligibility rules.
Do you run this practice? Claim it — verified implementers get a public contact pathway and can propose corrections.
Data sources
Where this practice's information was retrieved from, and when.
- C-NAPSE web research — accessed 2026-07-22
- TUMO Center for Creative Technologies (Simonian Educational Foundation) — accessed 2026-07-22
- Dalberg: TUMO Impact Evaluation, Final Report (July 2023) — accessed 2026-07-22
- ARMENPRESS: TUMO marks 15 years with 25 centres across 15 countries — accessed 2026-07-22
- Europa Nostra: TUMO Center for Creative Technologies, Yerevan — Award Winner — accessed 2026-07-22
- Wikipedia: TUMO Center for Creative Technologies — accessed 2026-07-22
Attachments
Similar practices you may find useful
Meet and Code
Germany
The goal of Meet and Code is to introduce children and young people between the age of 8 and 24 …
Coding Klassenfahrt (Coding Class Trips)
Germany
The Coding Klassenfahrt, initiated by the Technology Foundation Berlin and Samsung as an extracurricular offer of digital education, supports curious …
Future Digital Super Heroes
Belgium
The aim of Future Digital Super Heroes (FDSH) is to get young people into work or advanced college education through …