RasPETLJAvanje is a free online program supporting the learning of programming which, in the period from October to December 2025, brought together more than 500 participants from over 130 different municipalities of the Republic of Serbia, as well as from Bosnia and Herzegovina, Slovenia, and Austria.

The program was tailored both to absolute beginners who wanted to take their first steps in the field of programming and to those who already had some prior knowledge and wanted to further improve it. The theme of this year’s rasPETLJAvanje cycle was programming in Python and its library Pygame. During nine weeks of intensive work, participants successfully mastered the course material with continuous mentoring support and work in small groups.

Mentoring support included monitoring the progress of each participant recorded in the online classrooms of the petlja.org portal, reviewing homework assignments, providing guidelines for individual work, and answering questions and resolving doubts. Part of the mentoring also took place through weekly mentoring meetings, which served to clarify uncertainties and enabled participants to get to know each other, exchange experiences and ideas, and test their games.

rasPETLJAvanje 4.0 demonstrated that, with good mentoring support, learning programming can be accessible to everyone regardless of prior knowledge, as evidenced by the positive ratings from the evaluation questionnaire that participants completed at the end of the program.

In an anonymous survey, program participants highlighted that the experience was fun and useful, as they had the opportunity to learn new things and clarify uncertainties during the meetings. Throughout the activities, they acquired skills they had not previously possessed, and some gained inspiration for interesting ideas, such as creating a game. They particularly liked having space to develop their own small imaginary world, which further enriched the creative aspect of the program.

All participants who successfully completed the program received certificates of appreciation, while the most active ones were awarded T-shirts featuring rasPETLJAvanje motifs.

This activity was organized by the Petlja Foundation as part of the project “Building Key Computing Competencies – Towards the Workforce of the Future,” implemented by the United Nations Development Programme in partnership with the Ministry of Education, with the support of the Government of the Republic of Serbia.