There is an increasing need for workforce in the ICT sector in Europe: there may be a lack of 900 000 skilled ICT workers in 2020 in the EU. This high demand of IT jobs seems to be in contradiction with the soaring unemployment, especially that unemployment is high among the generation called “digital natives”. While this generation uses digital tools on daily basis, most of them have not had neither the confidence nor the initiative to upgrade their passive user skills into "active" IT skills that could have a value on the labour market. Regarding "digital confidence" women are is a worse situation than men. This is due on the one hand to the lack of ICT role models (girls being more influenced by role models than men, psychologists say) and and on the other hand to the general and hard-to-specify stereotype that "programming in not for a girls' brain. However, if women held digital jobs as frequently as men, the European GDP could be boosted annually by around € 9 billion. Therefore the private and NGO sector, as well as adult education bodies should unite their forces to change some of the barriers that stand between women and the "ivory-towered" culture of ICT experts. This learning partnership intends to find the best ways of how to "break the glass ceiling" of access to quality IT learning and self-learning and to help women to get out of the education-poverty trap where they are kept due to prejudices and low quality technology education by opening up the world of coding for disadvantaged women, thus offering them better chances for employment and access to lifelong learning. Objectives: Introduce disadvantaged women to basic ICT and coding; improve confidence of young women in their capabilities through a training and coaching program; raise awareness by collecting and promoting digital role models for women and girls that would inspire more girls and young women to consider careers in the digital technology market; showcase inventions, developments, innovations, success tangible products coming from women; join EU Code Week in 2017; publish a guide for adult education training providers on empowering disadvantaged women through ICT competence and confidence building. Intellectual outputs: 1. "What is behind the gender gap?" - a transnational needs analysis report on women's participation in coding/programming 2. "From ICT confidence to ICT competence" - a Curriculum for basic ICT competence development, including basic coding/programming competence 3. "LIFT Platform" - An online learning platform / competence and confidence building open education resource for introducing women to the world of coding from the very first steps 4. "Shrinking the gender gap in ICT" - a Roadmap paper presenting ICT competence and confidence development as an empowerment tool for women 5. "A world for women too" - Virtual video-tour in the world of role models, female It specialists The project will be run by a consortium of 6 partners coming from 5 countries: Portugal, Ireland, the Netherlands, Spain and Romania. All the partners, except for the promoter, have relevant experience in innovative adult education, community development through education and promoting international cooperation. The promoter, an innovative IT solutions company, will be the technical leader of the project and will be strongly supported in the management process by the Soros Education Center Foundation that has vast experience in transnational project management.
In the past years there has been a debate about the size of the actual skills deficit within the IT sector in Europe, but even the most optimistic forecasts says that around 700,000 ICT jobs will be needed to fill by applicants outside of the European labour market in the next years. So women will definitely have a well paid job in any of the EU countries if they dare to enter the IT labour market. But what chances do those have, who are complete beginners, who do not yet know what is the difference between a “front-end” and “back-end” developer, never excelled in Maths, nor had higher education in a technical field, and besides have heard several times that “IT is not for girls”? What chanced do they have if live in a remote area, far from the buzzing “silicon valleys” of their countries and above all they do not yet have high level English language competence? The direct target group of the LIFT project were “disadvantaged women”, defined, for the purpose of this project, as women who face isolation and hardship as a result of them having a low-level of education, being unemployed or living in a rural location where their basic needs for services, employment and education are currently not being met. The project consortium developed the products addressed to the direct target group in various languages (Dutch, English, Hungarian, Spanish, Portuguese, Romanian) for better accessibility: we are aware that English is a "must" for programming, but low level of English language competence should not be an obstacle in making a decision to start learning IT. Their intention of building a career in ICT motivated women taking part in our pilot activities to start developing their language skills too, concomitantly with starting a course in ICT. All basic IT training/ coding programmes emphasise that anyone can learn how to program as long as they are willing to put in the time and effort. The LIFT project team built its curriculum, learning platform and “virtual tour” of women role-models in the ICT sector upon this positive, optimistic presumption, encouraging women to dare to think about entering the ICT job market, offering them basic introduction to the world of ICT and coding: our platform being available not only in English but also in Dutch, in Hungarian, Italian, in Portuguese and in Spanish. Throughout this project the learning partnership tried to identify the best, locally adapted ways to "break the glass ceiling" of access to quality IT learning and self-learning and we helped 64 disadvantaged women to acquire basic ICT and coding competences, we gave free access to step-by-step, mother-tongue tutorial in HTML, CSS and JavaScript to over 300 people from across Europe and inspired thousands of people who watched our role model videos and attended our dissemination events. By the above figures we reached the proposed objectives: introduced 64 disadvantaged women to basic ICT and coding; improved confidence of young women in their capabilities through a training and self-learning program; raise awareness by selecting and promoting digital role models, i.e. women who can inspire more girls and young women to consider careers in the digital technology market; showcased our interventions reaching to educational stakeholders across the five participating countries and joined EU Code Week in 2019 with an event organised in Romania. Intellectual outputs: 1. “BREAKING THROUGH – HIGHLIGHTING THE GENDER GAP IN ICT ACROSS EUROPE”. Research & Needs Analysis Transnational Report 2. “FROM ICT COMPETENCE TO ICT CONFIDENCE”. A curriculum for basic ICT competence with 6 Units of Competence 3. "LET ICT CHANGE YOUR LIFE IN BETTER” - LIFT Learning Platform" https://ladiescode.eu/en/learning-platform/register - An online learning platform / competence and confidence building open education resource for introducing women to the world of coding from the very first steps, inlcuding a step-by-step interactive tutorial in HTML, CSS and JavaScript. 4. "ICT AS A TOOL FOR EMPOWERMENT FOR WOMEN”. A Roadmap paper presenting ICT competence and confidence development as an empowerment tool for women. 5. "VIRTUAL VIDEO TOUR" through five European countries where you can meet female role models in the IT sector The project has been run by a consortium of 6 partners coming from 5 countries: Portugal, Ireland, the Netherlands, Spain and Romania. All the above listed project outcomes, as well as dissemination events and activity reports are available on the project website: ladiescode.eu