Digital Empow(H)er

<< Background >>The motive for this project was to address the challenges around women’s inequality by enhancing the capacity of guidance practitioners to better support and empower low skilled women from disadvantaged communities to access learning opportunities and employment. The impact of Covid-19 increased home working opportunities providing both a challenge and an opportunity to empower women to consider careers in the ICT sector. The project aimed to enhance the capacity of guidance practitioners to avail of this change and to empower women in turning points of their career, lone mothers, migrants, unemployed, on precarious employment as well as self-employed women looking at sustainable independent living. To address these issues, the project developed a training curriculum to improve both the IT skills and workplace competences of disadvantaged women. << Objectives >>The main objectives of the project were:-To develop an adult guidance framework based on successful practices across Europe to better interpret and responds to challenges faced by low skilled women from disadvantaged backgrounds-To equip guidance practitioners to identify relevant competencies and update the guidance service provisions to the specific needs of targeted women based on their career and personal development paths, focusing on their digital literacy and potential in the digital sector.-To encourage adult women to be empowered, more resilient and become aware of their own competencies for the modern labour market, particularly in relation to digital, communication and interpersonal skills-To improve and extend the supply of high-quality and learning opportunities for adult women, targeting their specific needs in respect to life and employment challenges, through easily accessible digital resources within the existent local services. << Implementation >>-Focus groups and surveys were held with the target group in order to determine the challenges faced by disadvantaged women attempting to enter the labour market, and to develop an adult guidance framework based on Europe-wide best practices -Guidance practitioners were trained through a community of practice led training on the blueprint to develop the Digital EmpowHer curriculum-The training curriculum was designed, digitalized and implemented in each partner’s setting, where learning content and tools developed by the partnership were piloted by the target, and feedback was gathered through evaluation surveys. -A best practice handbook was developed detailing the experiences of each partners piloting sessions, and providing examples on how to incorporate the curriculum into the services of different organisations at a local level, complementary to other best practices to support women increase their digital literacy. << Results >>-Blueprint for empowerment, lifelong learning and employability of women, inspired on the entrepreneurial life design apporaches of the partner organisations.-Self-assessment tool including tailored list of competencies relevant to the project priorities, to measure digital literacy and empowerment of women in their career development journey.-Learning curriculum with activities and resources developed by the CoP, inspired by best practices and freely available in a user friendly digital platform.-Guidance practitioners training and User validation by target groups in all local settings, including feedback and improvements to the platforms,-Digital booklet gathering piloting lessons learnt in each partner country, as well as related projects and policies relevant to all project stakeholders.