Ladies Code Their Future Erasmus Project

Project Title

Ladies Code Their Future

Project Key Action

This project related with these key action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices

Project Action Type

This project related with this action type : Strategic Partnerships for adult education

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2017

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: ICT – new technologies – digital competences; Gender equality / equal opportunities; New innovative curricula/educational methods/development of training courses

Project Summary

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

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 176404 Eur

Project Coordinator

Fundatia Centrul Educational Spektrum & Country: RO

Project Partners

• INSTITUTO DE SOLDADURA E QUALIDADE
• Sc DirectWeb SRL
• MEATH COMMUNITY RURAL AND SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT PARTNERSHIP LIMITED
• Innovation Training Center, S.L.
• Inthecity Project Development
• EOLAS S.L.