The project CODEMI has been built & designed with the goal is to expand a network of digital skills schools all around Europe, increasing their impact on the most vulnerable groups in their communities. The project matches two needs and contexts: - The demand for digital skills among the human workforce in the EU labour market and - The employability and inclusion of migrants and ethnic minorities in Europe. The main objective of this project is to actually create an open network of digital education schools & tech professionals, that accelerates the labour market integration of migrants/ethnic minorities and other vulnerable people, by supporting them in acquiring and developing digital skills and key competences. This network also promotes youth work, as a way to accelerate labour integration for displaced migrants and enhance their integration. In detail, the objectives are to: - Strengthen the already existing network of organisations working with digital education and enable the exchange of good-case practices, capitalising on the different perspectives & ideas that each partner can contribute with. The fact that these organisations are already involved in the sector of tech education & employability, will ease the direct implementation of the current project, once approved. - Raise the efficiency of the hiring processes of the educational programs’ graduates, by building cooperation with different actors in the fields such as corporates and investing in practical employability skills. - Amend the educational materials already taught (curriculum, accredited courses, ICDL certification) in order to foster & ensure employability, socio-educational and personal development. - Share the produced materials and practices among the consortium’s partners and other organisations, as well. - Assess the quality, impact and relevance of the non-formal education methods that will be used in the classroom, in the coding programs. The target groups are young migrants and ethnic minorities, non-profit organisations, local communities and for-profit IT Companies
The demand for digital skills is growing in Europe and citizens need adequate skills to get empowered in a digital economy and society. For example, the rate of the digitally literate workforce residing in Sweden is quite low thanks to the government officials rolling out a nationwide subsidised computer and internet broadband program some thirty years ago. What’s more, the need for young people (incl. refugees/migrants) to show the identification of the skills they acquire through training courses, has created the need to certify the capacity of these people and ease their labour insertion. According to the Digital Skills and Job Coalition of the European Commission, we may lack as many as 756 000 ICT professionals by 2020. Yet youth unemployment is at almost 20%. More than a third of the labour force and, more broadly, around 45% of EU citizens are in effect digitally illiterate. On the other hand, according to UNHCR, 68.5 million people were displaced worldwide in 2017. These include refugees, asylum-seekers, internally displaced persons, returning refugees or stateless people. In the EU, in 2018 2.4 million immigrants entered the EU, meaning their need to integrate & rebuild their lives remains crucial. Through our CODEMI Project, we believe that coding and digital education can play a key role in their integration & long-term active citizenship. Taking this into account, CODEMI will address the digital skills, competitiveness and social inclusion of young migrants and ethnic minorities and empower them to become more resilient and competitive in the job market and the society.