There is also an increasing need for workforce in the ICT sector in Europe: It is estimated that there will be 756.000 unfilled vacancies for ICT professionals by 2020 (Source: EU Skills and Jobs, Update 2016).
The high demand of IT jobs seems to be in contradiction with the EU unemployment figures, especially with the fact that unemployment is high among those at risk of poverty and social exclusion (AROPE), such as: disabled people, victims of domestic violence, young people between the ages of 18 and 30 (the so-called “digital natives”), people over 40 years of long-term unemployment and non-EU immigrants.

The EU 2020 strategy promotes social inclusion by aiming to lift at least 20 million people out of the risk of poverty and social exclusion. Looking at the risk of poverty after social transfers (meaning that their disposable income was below their national at-risk- of-poverty threshold), 1 in 4 persons was at risk of income poverty in Romania (25.4%) and about 1 in 5 in Spain (22.1%), Bulgaria (22.1%) and Italy (19.9%), meaning that these are amongst the top ten of the highest rates in 2015 across the EU Member States.

CODE-N-SOCIAL is a European cooperation project aimed at providing access to quality IT learning and helping people AROPE to get out of the education-poverty trap where they are kept due to prejudices and low quality IT education by providing a guided introduction to coding with the focus on supporting and encouragement to make a first step in entering the IT world, or even recognizing that their passive IT-user skills can be transferred into valuable competencies for the labour market.

Thus the objectives of Code-n-Social are:

• Raise awareness about the value of empowering people at risk of social exclusion in ICT and coding to find their way in the labour market inspiring other persons at risk of social exclusion targets to consider careers in the digital technology market
• Build an innovative curriculum and enable people at risk of social exclusion to improve their confidence through a brand new learning and role modelling program
• Broaden the horizons of the target learners to experience innovation being inspired by the experience of others in a similar situation to theirs’
• Support the education and training community to empower in a motivational and engaging way those at risk of social exclusion through ICT up skilling and confidence building

Coordinator
Asociación de Personas con Discapacidad Verdiblanca – Spain

Partners
Innovation Training Center (ITC) – Spain
Spektrum Educational Center Foundation (SEC) – Romania
DWEB SRL – Romania
KU TU – Bulgaria
Formazione Co&So – Italy
Institut Régional d’Insertion Professionnelle et Sociale (IRIPS) – France