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Move It Forward for Women Refugees

On 15-16 October, in celebration of Code Week Europe 2016, the Digital Leadership Institute and its partners will organise the second FREE Move It Forward – female digital starters weekend bringing 100 teen and adult women* together from greater Brussels to develop digital projects that support women refugees and asylum-seekers in Europe. This initiative, part of the DLI inQube female digital accelerator, is supported by top technology companies, and youth and women’s networks and communities. Its objective is to give beginner girls and women the skills to drive positive change and enable them to become digital entrepreneurs and leaders.
Participants: If you are a teen or adult woman* interested in building your tech and startup skills for the benefit of women asylum-seekers and refugees in Europe, please apply to attend this FREE event at the following link: http://bit.ly/mifbru16oct
Applications are being accepted on a rolling basis and effort will be made to accommodate everyone who applies.
Supporters: Please see a list of our Move It Forward partners and sponsors below, and kindly contact us if you would like more information on how to support this event. Opportunities exist for Move It Forward volunteers, interpreters, coaches, jury members, content and media partners, prize contributors and sponsors.
*anyone who identifies as a woman

Draft Programme:

Day One – 15 October (Saturday):

  • 8:00-8:30 – Registration & Coffee
  • 8:30-9:30 – Opening Plenary: Inspiring talks by Move It Forward Partners
    • Welcome & Keynote Presentations:
    • Keynote: Ms. Yara Al-Adib – Service & UX Consultant/Deloitte Digital
  • 9:30-11:30 – Workshop 1: Web Development with WordPress (TBC)
  • 12:30 – 13:30 – Lunch Break
  • 13:30-15:30 – Workshop 2: Grow Your Business with Salesforce.org (TBC)
  • 15:30-18:00 – Brainstorming, Proposals, Idea Selection, Team Grouping & Project Work
  • 18:00-19:00 – Dinner
  • 19:00-22:00 – Project Work with Coaches

Day Two – 16 October (Sunday):

  • 8:00-8:30 – Coffee & Danishes
  • 8:30-10:30 – Workshop 3: Smartphone App Development with MIT App Inventor for Android (TBC)
  • 10:30-12:30 – Workshop 4: Launching Your Project in the Cloud with Amazon Web Services (TBC)
  • 12:30-13:30 – Lunch Break
  • 13:30-16:00 – Project Work with Coaches
  • 16:00-17:00 – Presentation Preparation
  • 17:00-19:00 – Closing Plenary: Project Presentations & Judging
  • 18:30 – Keynote Presentation: TBA
  • 19:00-21:00 – Awards Dinner & Networking
Awards:
Prizes will be awarded for top three projects presented on Sunday afternoon:
  • Overall Best: 6-month inQubation at DLI; 10 Hours one-to-one inQube Startup Coaching; Other TBC
  • Biggest Challenge: 4-month inQubation at DLI; 8 Hours one-to-one inQube Startup Coaching; Other TBC
  • Best Technical Solution: 4-month inQubation at DLI; 8 Hours one-to-one inQube Startup Coaching; Other TBC

Sponsors & Partners:
Thank you to the individuals and organisations who are making this event possib

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Brussels Women Move It Forward

On 23-24 January, forty teen and adult women gathered at DLI’s inQube space in Brussels to develop websites and smartphone applications, and to launch their own enterprises to tackle cyberviolence and promote online safety for girls and women. Participants of the first-ever Move It Forward Brussels female digital starter weekend — organised by DLI and subsidised by the Brussels Capital Region — came from across Brussels and around the world, to improve their tech skills and try their hand at entrepreneurship.

Says Bianca Debaets, Brussels Minister for Equal Opportunity and Digitalisation, and supporter of the Move It Forward initiative: “When women take up an active role in the ICT and business worlds, they are stronger. And that should reduce cyberviolence against women too. In that way, Move It Forward serves a dual purpose: It makes more women entrepreneurs and it empowers them digitally.” (Read a full press release about the Move It Forward event in Dutch here: Move It Forward Persbericht 2016.)

Attendees of Move It Forward Brussels, from 14 to 54 in age and representing upwards of twenty-two nationalities, dedicated an entire weekend to learning digital and entrepreneurial skills taught by DLI and its worldclass technology partners, including Tableau Software, Amazon Web Services, WordPress and AppInventor. With the help of a dedicated and talented team of coaches, participants developed innovative projects that they presented to a jury on Sunday evening for top honors. Jury-members included Ms. Maité Morren, Councilmember for Ixelles responsible for ICT, and representatives from European Schoolnet, Child Focus Belgium, DLI and AWS.

The two-day Move It Forward Brussels initiative kicked off on Saturday morning with a keynote presentation by Ms. Ellen Van den Berghe, 2015 Young ICT Lady of the Year in Belgium, and closed with an inspiring talk by Ms. Terry Reintke, Member of European Parliament who recently authored a report on Women and the Digital Society.

Top awards for the weekend were presented to ENAC, Detrolled and iCompassion-Ubuntu, each promoting a unique approach for addressing cyberviolence against girls and women. All winning teams receive several months’ inQubation and startup coaching at DLI and free membership for one year on the Amazon Web Service platform. Each member of the Overall Best project team also received Amazon Fire tablets. In addition, several follow-up workshops are already planned to allow inQube community members to further develop the digital and entrepreneurship skills they started learning at Move It Forward Brussels.

Organisations across Europe have expressed interest in organising Move It Forward events in their own cities, and future plans for the Brussels inQube community include taking on additional challenges faced by Europe’s girls and women, including immigration and asylum-seeking, health and nutrition, media portrayal, etc. Please contact us if you would like to learn more about the Move It Forward initiative, to partner with DLI/inQube, and/or to organise a Move It Forward event in your city!

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Move It Forward – Brussels awards DLI Cyberviolence project

Move It Forward

The Ministry of Equal Opportunity of the Brussels Capital Region has selected DLI to lead a seminal campaign engaging Brussels adult and teenage women in addressing cyberviolence in their communities.

Furthering equal opportunities off- and online

In Fall 2015, DLI will carry out several inQube – female digital accelerator workshops to build awareness about the growing problem of online violence, bullying and hate speech, and provide girls and women with skills and resources for tackling this problem.

Selma Franssen, DLI Communications Director and inQube Community Manager: “I’m incredibly proud that the Brussels Capital Region acknowledges DLI’s work to get more women into the ESTEAM* sector by granting us these funds. The way women are systematically excluded or bullied online (see gamer gate as a notable example), forms a huge barrier to creating an interest in the tech or digital sector among women. This is a problem we want to address.”

MIF-logo-notes

Move It Forward

Six workshops will be held at DLI headquarters in Brussels from September through November 2015, culminating in the 28-29 November global launch of a Move It Forward digital starter event for women focusing on Cyberviolence.

Participants get to learn from experts in the field of digital safety, psychology and online communities, as well as discuss the topic of online safety with representatives of tech companies and get hands on to lay the foundations for their own safe online community. They’ll also learn to tinker with digital means and build our own solutions.

Hands on workshops

Selma Franssen: ”We’re currently working on an exciting programme that will encourage knowledge sharing between experts and participants. Anyone who is active on social media will have some experience of unsafe situations and I’m looking forward to seeing the solutions we can come up with collectively.”

There is a limited number of places available for the six workshops (3 tailor made for girls and 3 tailor made for women) and the Move It Forward digital starer event event for girls and women. You can sign up through the links below.

We look forward to welcoming you to help “Move It Forward” with DLI!

To partner with or sponsor the Move it Forward Cyberviolence campaign and digital starter event, please contact us!

*ESTEAM:  Entrepreneurship, Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts & Mathematics

The 2015 Move It Forward project on Cyberviolence is supported by the Ministry of Equal Opportunity for the Brussels Capital Region.