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Konica Minolta supports IT gender diversity project Czechitas now for the 3rd year
Thursday 26. October 2017 - Since 2015, Konica Minolta has been sponsoring the NGO Czechitas, running a project to support entrepreneurship and IT knowledge capacity building for women in cooperation with the worldwide organisation Impact Hub. Having started in 20152016 with a pilot project in the Czech Republic, the project was extended to Germany in 20162017 and will now also be running its 3rd phase in 20172018 in Poland and Austria.
IT is still a male-dominated domain. Studies found that the percentage of female employees ranges from 15% to 40% in OECD countries. With the sponsorship, Konica Minolta supports educational one-day workshops, where students learn programming, web development, graphic design and data analysis. The workshops show female pupils, students, professionals, entrepreneurs and career changers a new perspective in the IT environment and focus on how IT topics are approached and implemented in a corporate environment. Dita P?ikrylová, Founder of the non-profit organisation Czechitas, explains the projects goal: “As part of our workshops, we will provide students with sufficient knowledge to be able to apply in future jobs relating to programming, online marketing and data analysis”. Furthermore, Konica Minolta provides its own IT expertise by way of different company speakers at the workshops. The first workshops started in the Czech Republic in September this year. A total of 240 women will be trained in this country. Next year, Germany will follow in January, Austria in February and Poland in March.
Great demand for workshops
The cooperation with Konica Minolta has been taking place since 2015. Within three years, a number of workshops took place in the Czech Republic and Germany. In total, over 50 workshops and courses, attended by more than 1,000 women, have been organised through Konica Minoltas partnership.
“These are not just numbers; it is a few thousands of lives that we have changed. Our participants fully demonstrate that IT is not an obstacle for women but a challenge. Over the past few years, hundreds of women have completely changed their life goals, and they are now working in the fastest-growing sector of the workplace. We even managed to connect three Czechitas graduates directly to the Konica Minolta office in Brno. Our goal is not just to change the stereotypes; we want to complement the school system in its problematic areas – most notably computer science teaching. Women do not even know how big a potential they have in this industry. We give them the basic knowledge and, above all, self-confidence. They have to continue themselves, but their results are amazing”, adds P?ikrylová. “Our courses gain high resonance and are usually fully booked within the first week of registration. This gives us the reassurance that our approach is going the right way.”
“We strongly believe in this sponsorship and want to contribute to make this project together with Czechitas more international year by year”, states Katrin Oppermann, General Manager of Human Resources & Academy at Konica Minolta. “Konica Minolta is constantly striving for diversity in its teams, and it is therefore only logical to expand the programme to support women internationally in the field of IT.”