The open call, funded under the Digital Europe Programme, has the objective to pilot actions to increase the number of students pursuing digital studies and careers, with a special focus on increasing participation of girls. It will support joint actions between leading technical higher education institutions, businesses and schools to promote digital studies, through hands-on activities and challenge-based projects.

Successful proposals should contribute to the achievement of the following objectives:

• to scale up the EU Code Week initiative to spread computational thinking and coding to as many people as possible, focusing particularly on young people, teachers and schools. This action will support putting the EU Code Week initiative on stronger and broader footing, thus further increasing its impact beyond the millions of people reached every year, among whom almost 50% are young women and girls.
• to put a strong emphasis on boosting the digital skills of young people, particularly of girls, to encourage them to pursue studies in STEM disciplines and take up a career in ICT.
• to give the possibilities to younger students to access the state-of-the-art laboratories, experience the campus facilities and follow seminars from the most renowned experts in Quantum computing, Cybersecurity, AI, cloud, among others.

In addition, projects’ results are expected to lead to the development of:

• Summer schools
• Specialised information and career days
• Dissemination and outreach activities, such as EU Code Week

The selected consortium for this proposal should be composed of a minimum of 4 applicants from 4 different eligible countries, each taking over the leading role in one of the following pillars of activities:

• Education, pedagogy and community building
• Communication and social media channels
• Information system development and management
• Impact assessment

Funding:

• total budget of €6.000.000
• The project duration is 24 months