Get Online Week 2015
European GOW 2015, coordinated by Telecentre Europe each year, was held on March 23-29 to get people online and digitally competent. A boost in awareness raising on digital inclusion and digital skills for jobs echoed in at least 25 countries in Europe and beyond. As Mr. Andrus Ansip, the Vice-president of the European Commission, put it in his blogpost, “events like Get Online Week are a great way to promote tech as a career. They are also about informing, encouraging and empowering people.”
GOW 2015 was launched in Riga on March 13th as the first milestone of the European Commission’s eSkills for Jobs Campaign 2015. Microsoft and Liberty Global continued their commitment as the main campaign sponsors.
Roughly 109,000 Europeans were involved in GOW 2015 this year participating in more than 4,000 events at national or local level, like trainings, seminars and workshops. From all those involved in the campaign activities, around 60,000 were young people and 7,500 unemployed. Millions have been reached through media and social media channels across Europe also thanks to the support of EU policy makers and leaders to endorse the initiative online. 1,600+ tweets with hashtag #GOW15 were sent out by more than 700 Twitter users in seven days of the campaign.
GOW 2015 paid special attention to young people and the unemployed in the context of eSkills for Jobs. In terms of awareness raising and communications, the campaign dedicated one day to young people (especially students) and a second day to the unemployed. All partners were encouraged to use their communications channels to promote tools and to organise activities targeting the two audiences.
Digital empowerment
GOW 2015 aimed to raise awareness and build people’s set of skills required by the available digital jobs. Many campaign partners organised and involved youngsters in various training activities and workshops about benefits of social media, potential of ICT careers, educational robotics and coding, among few. Two online platforms – YouRock.jobs and Skillage.eu – were popular employability tools promoted to young participants.
RomeCup 2015 with educational robotics in Rome
In Germany, TE member Stiftung Digitale Chancencollaborated with Christian Schenk (former Olympics medallist) and his youth organisation ‘Erkenne deine Stärken’ to offer an employability workshop for young people focusing on YouRock platform. Kraljevo School in Serbia run interactive activities for its students to use digital technology in new – creative – ways. Over 100 events were tailored to young people in Russia and two country-wide contests have been launched as part of GOW 2015. Albanian Institute of Science organized a meeting with young people in a high school in Tirana to encourage them consider studying in ICT fields as their specialists are sought after by the labour market. A three-day RomeCup 2015, dedicated to schools, universities and companies to showcase robotics and network, was the highlight of Italian GOW this year, attracting some 3,000 participants.
Career Counselling Day in Poland
Foundation for Community Network in Hungary organised a series of presentations on finding a job with the help of social media. In Poland Activation Foundation supported FRSI and organized a Career Counselling Day for unemployed people under 30. Young unemployed people were targeted in Lithuania, where Association Langas į ateitį addressed the issue of online reputation building and its importance for job search. A similar topic was tackled byUnioncamere and Camera di Commercio di Bologna (Chambers of commerce) in Italy who organised a 2-hour event about how to manage digital identity/reputation on social media and how this affects recruitment processes.
Digital inclusion
GOW 2015’s approach is not to leave anyone behind, by raising awareness and initiating offliners and various disadvantaged groups in the online world through training and events. For the first time this year GOW highlighted the coding for inclusion activities in telecentres, through which participants had a chance to learn how to code. Besides, GOW featured the introduction of e-participation tools to communities, so that new audiences can find out how to participate actively in their local, national and European decision-making processes. Activities to attract small and medium companies to go digital also took place through workshops and mentoring.
GOW 2015 activities in Slovenia
11 students of the Technical University Dortmund took the initiative to prepare ICT related courses for institutions around the urban area of Dortmund. The director of the City of Dortmund Economic Development Agency committed himself as patron of the GOW Dortmund 2015 and underlined the importance of digital competences for the Dortmund labour market in a kick off meeting held on March 21.
Key publications on GOW 2015:
- Andrus Ansip (European Commission): Digital skills, jobs and the need to get more Europeans online
- Alexa Joyce (Microsoft): Empowering a Generation with Digital Skills
- Lucilla Sioli (European Commission): Here is how we will improve digital skills and create more jobs in Europe
- Ramune Petuchovaite (EIFL): Public libraries rising to the challenges of the digital era
- eSkills for Jobs: Europe, Digital Skills, and the Digital Single Market
- Presswire: Getting Europe online, the digital empowerment campaign
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