With pleasure we return to talk about technologies, projects and initiatives dedicated to gender equality in the AV world and digital innovationl. We do so in this renewed appointment with the column of Connessioni, realised in collaboration with the Italian Group of the AVIXA Women’s Council, and dedicated, in this and the next issue, to a special association.
Informatici Senza Frontiere (ISF) is a non-profit association established in 2005 to fight the digital divide in Italy and in emerging countries. Over the years, it has focused its training and dissemination activities on the elderly, migrants, and people in difficulty in general, to enable them to approach the new technologies, which are now indispensable for communicating, relating, and finding work. In its 19 years of activity, ISF has trained thousands of people to use their PCs or smartphones intelligently, also as tools for working and looking for a job. Over time, the need for training has emerged as a more general emergency and as a lever to also foster female empowerment and employment, another weak point in our country.
Who is ISF and what does it do in particular on the gender gap in the professional sphere? Lorenza Pilloni, project manager of Informatici Senza Frontiere and project manager of Progetto ITac@, a leading initiative that we will tell you about in this column, answers. “Computer literacy is no longer enough, even the new generations must learn at the very least how to use digital productivity tools professionally,” she explains. “Sixty per cent of SMEs in Italy are digitally literate, while 46% of Italian women do not even have a knowledge that can be defined as basic.
Training against the digital divide
For this reason, in recent years the association has launched, among other initiatives, second-level training projects around fragility categories. Targeting women from anti-violence centres and migrant women. And, more generally, to women with poor digital skills who risk losing their jobs. Progetto ITac@, dedicated precisely to digital specialisation for these categories of women, goes in this direction. The project, which we will explore in more detail in the next installment of this column, offers women between the ages of 18 and 50 the possibility of starting second-level digital training courses in basic programming, no code/low code, and the React language.
The very structure of the initiative is interesting, as it is highly synergetic. Indeed, Informatici Senza Frontiere is the project leader of Progetto ITac@, submitted in response to the ‘Futura’ call of the Digital Republic Fund. However, ISF is carrying out the project through a broad partnership, involving both companies (Mygrants, Impactskills and Intesys) and the non-profit world, also represented by the Centro Immigrazione Asilo e Cooperazione Internazionale di Parma e provincia and Cope (Cooperazione Paesi Emergenti). “The goal is permanence in the labour market, since in the coming years many more professionals with these skills will be sought,” adds Lorenza Pilloni. Informatici Senza Frontiere would like many women to be part of this future”.
This article is part of the column produced in collaboration with the Italian Group of the AVIXA Women’s Council. One of the Council’s main objectives is to give visibility to professional women in the AV world in Italy and to activities dedicated to diversity, equity and inclusion in the Italian STEM sector.
