Berlin EdTech Startup Teaches 10,000 Students Digital Literacy Skills

A Berlin-based EdTech startup called Code4All has quietly been running free digital literacy workshops in 23 schools across the city’s most underserved districts, and this month it announced it has now trained more than 10,000 students since its launch in 2023.

The milestone arrives as a cascade of global crises, from the fake news swirling around Spain’s recent deadly wildfires to disinformation campaigns linked to the Strait of Hormuz closure, underscores how urgently young people need to separate fact from fiction online. Germany’s own federal agency for civic education has warned that digital literacy rates among 14- to 18-year-olds in Berlin lag behind those in Hamburg and Munich by as much as 12 percentage points.

From Einstein Gymnasium to the Sonnenallee Library

Code4All operates out of a small office on Emser Straße in Neukölln, but its real footprint is in the classrooms of the Hermann-von-Helmholtz-Schule in Wedding and the Ernst-Abbe-Gymnasium in Neukölln. The company’s flagship program, called “Quellen-Check” (Source Check), is a two-hour module that teaches students how to verify images, spot bot-driven accounts, and identify sponsored content. The workshops are held during regular school hours, often in collaboration with the Berlin state’s digital-education initiative “SenBJF Digital,” which provides Wi-Fi hotspots and tablets.

The company’s co-founder, a former journalist at Der Spiegel, designed the curriculum after noticing that his own children’s school-the Ludwig-Cauer-Grundschule in Charlottenburg-had no formal digital media training. Since then, Code4All has expanded to partner with the Stadtbibliothek Berlin-Mitte on Kreuzberg’s Oranienstraße, where it runs free Saturday workshops open to any teenager. Last month, 340 kids showed up for a session on how to reverse-image-search wildfire photos circulating on WhatsApp groups.

A Cost-Benefit That Adds Up

Each workshop costs Code4All roughly €1,200 to run, covering two trainers, printed materials, and the library’s room rental fee of €150. For comparison, a single year of a private digital-literacy tutoring program at a center on Kurfürstendamm costs parents €2,400. Code4All has been funded so far through a €450,000 grant from the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research, plus a €120,000 donation from the Berlin-based Mozilla Foundation office. The company says it is on track to reach 15,000 students by the end of 2026.

“This isn’t optional anymore,” a company spokesperson said in a statement. “If a 16-year-old can’t tell a state-sponsored propaganda post from a reliable news article, they’re not just failing a test, they’re becoming a vector for real-world harm.”

Code4All next plans to launch a mobile “Digital Literacy Bus” that will visit playgrounds and Jugendclubs in Marzahn and Spandau starting September 2026. The bus, funded by a new €200,000 city grant, will feature 12 laptops, a printer for “fake vs. real” exercises, and a generator for power in parks. For any parent, teacher, or teen who wants to learn more, the company’s next free public workshop is on July 25 at the Stadtbibliothek Berlin-Mitte on Oranienstraße, from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. Registration is online at code4all.berlin.