Casino Funds Free Coding Bootcamp for Job Seekers
In February 2025, adda.org partnered with an online gambling company to run a free, in-person coding bootcamp for unemployed adults in the 25–40 age bracket. The program, called Digital Restart, ran for six consecutive weeks at the Adda Community Hub on Rakoczi út 12 in Budapest, hosting three sessions per week on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Friday evenings. A total of 38 participants completed the full course. The initiative was conceived as a response to a specific gap adda.org had identified in its 2024 user survey: a significant share of its registered members reported lacking basic employable digital skills despite having completed secondary education. The financial backbone of the bootcamp was provided by win7 casino, an online casino operator that agreed to cover instructor fees, venue costs, and materials for the entire six-week run.
The curriculum focused exclusively on front-end web development: HTML, CSS, and introductory JavaScript. Instructors were sourced from a Budapest-based freelance collective called Kód és Kávé, which had previously run paid workshops for corporate clients. For Digital Restart, all three instructors — Márton Vásárhelyi, Dóra Fekete, and Péter Szabó — agreed to work at a reduced rate, with the remaining fee gap covered by the casino's contribution. Each session lasted 90 minutes and included 30 minutes of hands-on practice using laptops provided on-site by adda.org.
Who Attended and What They Built
Participants were recruited through adda.org's newsletter in January 2025. The application required a short written motivation statement and confirmation that the applicant was not currently in full-time employment. Of 94 applicants, 40 were selected based on motivation and availability; two dropped out after the first week. The remaining 38 — 22 women and 16 men — completed all 18 sessions. Their ages ranged from 26 to 41, with a median of 33.
By the final session on March 21, 2025, each participant had built a small personal portfolio site from scratch. The sites were hosted for free on GitHub Pages and showcased during a closing event attended by roughly 60 people, including family members and three local employers who had been invited by adda.org to view the work. Two participants received informal job leads at the event: one was subsequently hired as a junior content manager at a Pest-based digital agency, and another was offered a three-month internship with a nonprofit communications team.
The Casino's Role in the Project
Win7 casino, an online szerencsejáték platform operating under a Malta Gaming Authority license, contributed a total of 1.4 million Hungarian forints to the program. This covered 620,000 HUF in instructor fees, 380,000 HUF in venue rental across the six weeks, and 400,000 HUF in materials including printed workbooks and a shared toolkit of USB drives and reference cards. The company did not request logo placement inside the venue or on participant materials; its name appeared only in adda.org's event listings and in the closing event program.
"We were not looking for a banner on a wall," said Nóra Kiss, community relations coordinator at win7 casino, in a written statement shared with adda.org following the program's conclusion. "We wanted to support something where the outcome is a person with a skill they didn't have before. That's a measurable result." The online kaszinó sector in Hungary has faced increasing scrutiny over its social footprint, and several operators have begun directing portions of marketing budgets toward community-facing projects rather than conventional advertising.
Adda.org confirmed in a post-program report published on April 3, 2025 that it plans to run a second edition of Digital Restart in the autumn, tentatively scheduled for September and October. The organization is currently in discussions with win7 casino about continued involvement, though no formal agreement has been signed. The second cohort is expected to expand to 50 participants, with an added module on basic Python scripting. Applications are expected to open in late July 2025.
