It’s called StartUp Lab. It will start on March 29 and is dedicated to all women who wish to develop their business ideas. It’s a new module by Job Digital Lab, the largest educational course developed in collaboration by ING Italia and Fondazione Mondo Digitale to develop and reinforce digital skills by reaching out to 5000 individuals throughout Italy.
The StartUp Lab for Women is a custom-tailored business-mentoring course for groups of women who are seeking to requalify or relocate professionally. The course provides eight hours of on-line training and remote tutoring sessions to orient aspiring businesswomen in developing their entrepreneurial idea and business model. The course also includes sessions analysing access to calls and funding and the public presentation of ideas.
Many women have already been participating since November in Job Digital Lab to get back into action and extend their skills. Indeed, women represent 70% of the participants, such as Maria Elena (50) a book seller for half of her life, Patricia (47), who has run a Pilates Centre for over 20 years and Veronica (27), a recent graduate in cognitive science. Their activities have suffered due to the pandemic, but this has not stopped them from looking forwards and continuing to invest their energies in other projects.
Thanks to the courses organised by Job Digital Lab, Maria Elena has learned to use social media and understood the importance of creating a network whilst looking for a job. Patricia instead has started exploring the potential of the web to reinvent jobs during crises …. Her Pilates lessons are now held on Zoom and other distance platforms. Veronica continues to study notwithstanding the fact that everything seems to have ground to a halt.
“After having lost my job, I decided I need to freshen up. I had never considered using social media, which are not immediate to someone who grew up with paper books,” explains Maria Elena. “Then, I understood that there was a whole world to learn about out there, a world made of relations, conversations, exchanges and ocntacts that could be useful to get back into action!”
“Digital tools,” Patricia points out, “are allowing me to identify new solution to the forced closures and allow me to prove to myself and others that I have not given up. I advise these courses to anyone who thinks there are no routes left to discover.”
“Luckily, during such a complicated period, education has never stopped. I chose Job Digital Lab because the digital world was unknown to me. And thanks to this course, I now have a new key to interpreting social media, one that is allowing me to use my skills in the virtual world and create new work opportunities,” adds Veronica.
It has been defined as a true the "Shecession." In 2020, only in Italy, the recession has erased 444,000 jobs, 70% of which were held by women, further complicating the social inequality that existed before the pandemic. And yet, as the Bank of Italy has repeatedly indicated, greater female access to the labour market and achieving the Lisbon Objective of 60% would “mechanically” allow the GDP to rise by 7%, notwithstanding a drop in average production rates.
Female underemployment costs Europe, 370 billion euro a year. This is why gender equality is one of the top priorities of the European Commission’s new guidelines for national Recovery Plans.
In the meantime, Job Digital Lab continues to organise basic digital literacy courses to drive the use of social platforms and on-line services and the Digital Academy on the jobs of the future. [see: educational programme (in Italian)].
For further information: mondodigitale.org/it/news/formazione-su-misura
PRESS KIT
- Press Release – Project launch
- Project Profile
- Educational Programme
- Announcement for participants
- Infographic
