Polish AI entrepreneur and founder of Cosmose AI, Miron Mironiuk, has launched the global ‘Programming = our Second Language’ education program, with the ‘Code with Pope’ initiative initiating its promotion. This educational initiative, available in English, Spanish, Italian and Polish, is dedicated to providing children worldwide with the knowledge and skills necessary to shape their digital future.
This launch coincides with the Masterclass Leadership Summit on the Future of Humanity, taking place this week at the Papal Palace of Castel Gandolfo, where Mironiuk is joining other European business and science leaders to explore some of the most crucial questions of the 21st century. Central to their discussions is the profound impact of AI and technology on our collective destiny, a topic that deeply resonates with Miron Mironiuk and Pope Francis, who are advocating for this visionary educational initiative aimed at fostering digital literacy among children worldwide.
In today’s digital age, programming skills have become as fundamental as reading and writing. The World Economic Forum’s data reveals that the fastest-growing jobs are in the technology sector. However, a severe global shortage of digital skills threatens to leave 85m job positions unfilled by 2030. As a result, increasing access to high-quality programming education has become a necessity, particularly in low and middle-income countries.
The ‘Code with Pope’ initiative will champion access to programming education through a free online education platform for students aged 11-15 across Europe, Africa and Latin America. This initiative represents the global expansion of ‘Programming = our Second Language,’ a bipartisan initiative initially launched by Mironiuk and policymakers in Poland, which has already made a substantial impact on thousands of children in the country. Poland is making significant strides in the tech scene, particularly in AI in companies like Google Brain, Cosmose AI, and Open AI (more than 20 per cent of OpenAI employees are Poles). Poles are also leading the way when it comes to tech talent: in 35 editions of the International Olympiad in Informatics, a prestigious international computer science competition, the country ranks second, short only of China, despite being 37 times smaller. 
Mironiuk, a self-made tech entrepreneur and the founder of the AI retail company Cosmose AI, draws his motivation from firsthand experience, witnessing how programming skills can transform lives.
As a proud Pole, he is passionately dedicated to leveraging the potential of the Catholic Church to improve fundamental skills for children and communities in Catholic-majority countries. Education gaps in Catholic-majority nations remain a concern, with countries like Mexico and Colombia ranking among the lowest third of all economies for fundamental skills, and the Philippines in the bottom 10,according to PISA 2018 rankings.
He said: “Today, we are initiating the global ‘Code with Pope’ project, aimed at introducing more children to the world of programming and bridging the glaring disparities in education that are rapidly emerging across the globe. Proficiency in programming is the key to a brighter future for the next generation. Learning programming allows children to improve comprehensive reading, logical thinking and problem-solving. We need to improve children’s resilience to threats of AI-driven manipulation and fake news, and programming skills have a role to play. But gaps persist in these fundamentals across the globe, including countries with a large Catholic community. That’s why I’m inviting parents and caregivers worldwide to get their kids to ‘Code with Pope’, so they can be empowered to chart their own destinies in the digital age.”
