CODEMI - empowering disadvantaged communities through coding and digital entrepreneurship

<< Background >>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.<< Objectives >>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<< Implementation >>Transnational meetings- We will organise meetings to ensure the high quality of this project and further develop our partnership with the partnering organisations. There will be three trans-national meetings - kick-off meeting, midterm meeting and final meeting. All meetings will be attended by all partners. Production of results - There will be three main project results produced as a part of CODEMI. These results are the following: 1) Online Coding Programme This project result will be answering to the needs of digital education and coding education amongst young migrants and ethnic minorities. As this is an online course taking into account the specific needs related to self-fulfillment, self-esteem and social obstacles, this coding course will be an innovative tool to empower and equip young migrants and minorities with coding, and digital entrepreneurship skills all over Europe. This course will stay up for at least 5 years after the end of this project.2) Online Mentoring ProgrammeThis course will help young migrants and ethnic minorities to develop their mentoring and coaching skills and become a mentor of the coding programme for other youngsters. Therefore it will be an education course that will develop leadership skills and youth work skills by allowing young people themselves to further empower their communities. The element of innovation lies in the fact that these participants will not be youth workers, but young people themselves who want to contribute more towards the development and empowerment of their peers. This course will stay online for at least 5 years after the end of the project.3) Impact research report on digital education for ethnic minorities and migrantsAs this approach - to empower young migrants and ethnic minorities - is innovative in each of our communities, carrying out an extensive research on local, national and international level is essential in order to accurately assess the impact of these methodologies to our specific target group. As a result of this research being carried out and disseminated widely, more organisations all over Europe can take example of our best practices and implement similar activities in their target groups and communities.Learning, teaching, training activities - We will have two LTTs for two cohorts of young mentors willing to take the leadership role in their communities and become a mentor for other young migrants and ethnic minorities enrolling in our coding course.<< Results >>There will be three main project results produced as a part of CODEMI. These results are the following: 1) Online Coding Programme This project result will be answering to the needs of digital education and coding education amongst young migrants and ethnic minorities. As this is an online course taking into account the specific needs related to self-fulfillment, self-esteem and social obstacles, this coding course will be an innovative tool to empower and equip young migrants and minorities with coding, and digital entrepreneurship skills all over Europe. This course will stay up for at least 5 years after the end of this project.2) Online Mentoring ProgrammeThis course will help young migrants and ethnic minorities to develop their mentoring and coaching skills and become a mentor of the coding programme for other youngsters. Therefore it will be an education course that will develop leadership skills and youth work skills by allowing young people themselves to further empower their communities. The element of innovation lies in the fact that these participants will not be youth workers, but young people themselves who want to contribute more towards the development and empowerment of their peers. This course will stay online for at least 5 years after the end of the project.3) Impact research report on digital education for ethnic minorities and migrantsAs this approach - to empower young migrants and ethnic minorities - is innovative in each of our communities, carrying out an extensive research on local, national and international level is essential in order to accurately assess the impact of these methodologies to our specific target group. As a result of this research being carried out and disseminated widely, more organisations all over Europe can take example of our best practices and implement similar activities in their target groups and communities.