Mobile World Capital Barcelona and Huawei promote technology skills training for people in situations of vulnerability

• This project is part of the collaboration agreement between Huawei and the Barcelona Mobile World Capital Foundation within the “BCN Inclusive Coding” program promoted by the foundation.
• The course was created with the mission of reducing the digital talent gap through training in web development for people at risk of exclusion in order to favor their incorporation into the labor market and improve their digital skills.
• The program, which will start in September and will last seven months, will train 20 people in vulnerable situations, all of them under the tutelage of the Convent of Santa Clara in Manresa.

3 May, 2022

Barcelona, May 3rd, 2022. Mobile World Capital Barcelona—through its BCN Inclusive Coding program—and Huawei join forces to promote a professional reorientation project aimed specifically to people in vulnerable situations. The initiative was created with the mission of promoting their insertion in the labor market through training in the digital technical skills most in demand by companies.

Within this initiative, a web development course entitled “Fullstack Development” will be organized for 20 people at risk of exclusion, supervised by the Convent of Santa Clara in Manresa, with a special focus on achieving outstanding participation of women. 

More specifically, the “Fullstack Development” training will be of 850 hours and will be given by the Migracode training center. At the same time, Huawei’s ICT Academy training center will also provide training in digital skills for the development of cutting-edge digital technologies. 

A project with a dual vocation: to fight the digital divide and to offer a training opportunity to people in vulnerable situations.

The project responds to the current social context in Catalonia by offering a global solution that can provide benefits to society. Thus, the demand for digital talent has grown by 80% in the last two years in the region as a result of the digitization of companies. In fact, in Barcelona alone, one of the most important digital hubs in Europe, there are hundreds of technology companies and startups that require new talent to boost their digital projects. 

In addition, 26% of Catalan society lives at risk of social exclusion for reasons like gender, ethnicity, or employment status. As a consequence, there is a high difficulty for these profiles to access specialized and quality training programs, thus reducing the percentage of job placement in the technology sector by this group.

Therefore, BCN Inclusive Coding was born, a program led by Mobile World Capital Barcelona within the framework of the Barcelona Digital Talent initiative and with the participation of other relevant entities such as Fundación Convento de Santa Clara, Cruz Roja Catalunya, Fundación Esplai, Factoría F5, Open Cultural Center or MigraCode Barcelona.

A 360º project

Through this project, talent will be promoted in the digital disciplines with the highest market demand, such as “Full Stack Development”, boosting its incorporation in the technology sector through connection, mentoring and recruitment activities. It will also help to generate a network of companies socially committed to the promotion of digital talent and professional inclusion with a diversity of profiles.

Jordi Arrufí, director of the digital talent program at Mobile World Capital Barcelona and director of Barcelona Digital Talent, believes that “this project allows us to accompany talent in their training in digital disciplines with the highest demand in the market, along with their incorporation into the technological sector. Thus, we want to demonstrate that vulnerability should not be a factor that conditions anyone to be able to pursue their ambitions and professional challenges. Digital talent moves everywhere and it is our duty to be able to offer the same opportunities so that anyone has a place in this sector”. 

In addition, Therese Jamaa, Vice President of Huawei Spain, adds that “this project brings together two fundamental pillars of our strategy: improving digital skills and helping to bridge the digital divide among the most disadvantaged. We are extremely happy to participate in a project that shows that the main role of technology should be to help and improve people’s lives. To this end, we will work on this wonderful initiative to give people, regardless of their gender, situation or country of origin, the necessary tools to boost their work and social development and, in this way, contribute to the achievement of a better and fairer world”. 

Agreement to develop intelligent communications projects 

This project is part of the collaboration agreement reached between Mobile World Capital Barcelona and Huawei, being the first initiative to start after its signing in February. The agreement was born under the objective of promoting and developing joint projects of intelligent communications in all areas of work of the Foundation. 

For this reason, the implementation of joint initiatives that contribute to solving the current digital talent gap, based on the training of professionals in digital skills, with support for disadvantaged groups, is envisaged. It also promotes the attraction of female digital talent and the launch of calls for proposals to identify existing digital solutions that, in turn, help to understand and address the ethical, social and economic challenges of digital transformation. 

Lastly, the companies will focus on the development of projects for the creation of startups, connecting scientific and innovative talent, bringing entrepreneurship and innovation closer to the business and productive environment, as well as the design of projects in the field of intelligent connectivity, with the identification of relevant use cases.