Power users and programmers

It's great that educators and their students are becoming users, even power users, of free and open-sourced software applications. Hopefully, the number of FLOSS end-users will multiply, engaging many more in learning projects that are interesting explorations and presentations.

Is it possible that we are ignoring, however, a fairly large group of students and educators who might benefit from learning to program, creating their own applications from scratch or hacking someone else's open-sourced code? What might we do to get kids, especially in elementary schools, started on a path which could lead eventually to careers as computer scientists and professional software engineers or to careers in which programming is a necessary collateral activity to one's specialty?

I'm not prepared in this posting to list free and open-sourced software development tools and tutorials that might be appropriate for youngsters. This is because I became a professional programmer (after the age of forty) using proprietary, commercial software development tools. I am only amateurishly familiar in a hands-on way with comparable FLOSS tools.

But, I'm considering a search for FLOSS development tools and communities to find opportunities for kids who show interest and readiness to begin creating their own software.

Are any of you already familiar with open communities and free software development tools that kids might take advantage of?