The //kood coding school launched in Jõhvi, Ida-Viru County in 2021, backed by the founders of several of Estonia's most successful startups. It brought the first "peer-to-peer learning" curriculum to Estonia, allowing students to study online, onsite or hybrid at their own pace. Its mission was to address labor shortages in the IT sector.

The rapid 12 to 15-month courses are popular with those just starting their professional careers as well as those looking to retrain. Campuses have since opened in Estonia's Võru (kood/Võru) and Paide (kood/Järva) and Kuopio, Finland (kood/Sisu).

//kood submitted a project to expand to Ukraine after seeing a call from the Estonian Center for International Development, which is helping to redevelop and reconstruct the Zhytomyr region. The school was officially opened by First Lady Sirje Karis earlier this month.

//kood project manager Mari-Liis Kitter said the move seemed like a good fit due to the large number of Ukrainian alumni from previous courses.

"It felt natural for us to try this because we have experience with Ukrainians and we wanted to help," she told ERR News.

But while the schools in Jõhvi, Võru and Paide have their own campuses, the setup in Zhytomyr is a little different. The organization has partnered with Zhytomyr Polytechnic State University to provide the physical facilities and 2.5 staff members, //kood contributes the syllabus and know-how and Tallinn City Government donated the equipment.

"I think this is the ideal way to expand. The investment is not very big, we can do it rapidly and the risk to all parties is minimal," Kitter explained.

The term started on Monday with over 80 new students. Kitter said the majority are local to the region, with around 30 percent coming from elsewhere in Ukraine. She said one of the course's strengths is its diversity.

"Different people from different backgrounds work in a team together and they have very different perspectives on how to solve problems. This usually leads to better solutions. If you are inclusive and have an idea of how men think, how women think, young people, old people... this is what we want to foster," Kitter described. "This is the 'peer-learning' aspect, people will teach each other."

She is also proud to see so many women taking up places and they total around 30 percent of this year's intake. "A lot of women need to acquire new skills because men are at war," Kitter said.

kood/Zhytomyr also held a female boot camp earlier this month to bust long-held myths about women in technology and to encourage them to get into the tech sector.

"It is super important to have more women, because society does not have 30 percent women and 70 percent men," Kitter said.

The 2.5-member team in Zhytomyr are all women and female alumni from the Jõhvi course helped to launch the program.

One of ESTDEV's goals is to bring high-skilled jobs to the region, such as by developing the local timber industry. //kood's focus on short courses and retraining should also help Zhytomyr in the future. Kitter said one measure of the organization's success is developing ties with companies that can hire their graduates.

"This is something we are working on in Zhytomyr too, establishing contacts with local IT businesses, bringing them in to showcase their work, showing students their offices and job shadowing and mentoring," she said. "That is an integral part of the program... people getting into the jobs they want."

There are also plans to expand //kood within Ukraine. Kitter said the organization recently signed a memorandum of understanding with Ukraine's Ministry of Education and Science. //kood will provide the learning platform for free for three years, while the ministry helps to find new partners across Ukraine.

"This is super nice support," Kitter said, adding that donors will also need to be found for the project.

While it's too soon to talk about where else schools could open, she hinted that there is potential in the western city of Lviv.

"But we are eager to expand because Ukraine is a country with a big population and our program is a quick way to reskill people. I think we can be very useful to the Ukrainian people, the economy and recovery," she said.

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