Program-It
Show them they can make this.
A free, hands-on coding program for South Side Chicago youth — where kids build a real working game in one afternoon and leave knowing that they made it.
First workshop · Program-It × Hip-Hop DetoxX
Kids built a Flappy Bird game with Code.org
Where the name comes from
In 2013, during Computer Science Education Week, President Barack Obama recorded a message to American students as part of Code.org's Hour of Code campaign. It became a poster that ended up on classroom walls all over the country — including the elementary school our founder attended on the South Side of Chicago.
Don't just play on your phone — program it.
— President Barack Obama, Computer Science Education Week, 2013That single sentence — the one that told a kid you can be a maker, not just a user — is where Program-It gets its name. Every workshop we run is an attempt to put another version of that poster on another kid's wall.
What Program-It is
Program-It is the flagship program of The Bolton Foundation. It exists to close a gap we saw firsthand: bright, curious kids on Chicago's South Side rarely encounter the same on-ramps into software that their peers elsewhere take for granted. We change that by putting real curriculum, mentorship, and finished projects directly in their hands.
Every workshop is free. Every kid leaves with something they built.
Summer Workshop 2026 — the first one
Our first workshop ran Monday, July 13, 2026 in Hazel Crest, IL, in partnership with Hip-Hop DetoxX — a Chicago-based youth organization led by our founder's cousin, Enoch Muhammad, that blends social-emotional learning, trauma-informed care, and hip-hop arts to reach kids in grades 3–12. Program-It brought the coding curriculum; DetoxX brought the room, the students, and the trust they've spent years building with families across the South Side.
In a single afternoon, students worked through every lesson of Code.org's Course C — start to finish, on their own — building a working Flappy Bird clone of Dong Nguyen's 2013 mobile classic. In the final lesson they remixed the game with their own sprites, mechanics, and rules — turning a tutorial into their game.
What kids walked away with
- A working Flappy Bird game they built themselves — and a remixed version of it
- A working understanding of loops, conditionals, and events
- A Code.org account they can keep building on at home
- The confidence that they belong in this room
How to help
Program-It runs on volunteer mentors, donated curriculum time, and community partners who host workshops in their neighborhoods. If you're interested in any of that — or if you want to bring Program-It to your school, church, or community center — reach out.