One must be well conscious that if we don't work on the 4 levels, the goal will not be achieved.
This network has been started up to tackle at least two of the above mentioned items.
It is build upon an already existing partnership called Explore.
Explore is a set of training programs started up to increase the presence of women in IT jobs.
Since 2001, training centres and centres of socio professional insertion provide, together, training programs in new technologies to jobless women applying for a job.
Supported by the European Social Funds, the federal Ministry of employment, and other partners as sectoral funds, Explore is established in 7 towns in Belgium, (Antwerp, Arlon, Brussels, Hasselt, Kortrijk, Liege and Namur) and has the objective to put women at work in the IT field.
Those centres were able to develop training programs in accordance with the needs of the labour market and the specificities of their target groups. They adapted their trainers, their schedules and their recruitment procedures to the specificities of the Explore trainings. With a great diversity of form and contents, the centres set up programs that were innovating, original, and most capable of bringing more women in these jobs.
Over 700 women already followed trainings in Explore groups, and many others took part in initiation or orientation modules. Not all will make careers in IT, all did not immediately find an employment, but for each one of them, as testimonies show, the acquisition of competences in IT meant a larger autonomy, a better control of the computer, and more chances on the labour market.
Like any project of professional insertion, Explore witnessed exemplary successes: women who discovered a passion for technique and who reached responsibility functions in large companies, whereas they never had switched on a computer before the training.
And there are also all the women for whom, in a maybe more ordinary way, IT became a job, a way to earn a correct living, for whom the training has been the opportunity to gain access to another future.
But because IT is at the same time charged with elitist representations, and more and more present in everyday life, to give women the opportunity to become IT specialists always reaches a little beyond only professional insertion: it is an act of empowerment.
The present partnership has been established to develop a joint program to implement the Microsoft Unlimited Potential initiative with the 7 Explore partners plus an additional one.