Smart City Scholarship: 9 weeks to become a web coder!

Brussels Smart City supports the Smart City Scholarship, fast-track training in coding and the creation of web applications for 5 Brussels citizens who are jobless or with limited financial resources. Applications received until 30 September inclusive!

In terms of population, the Brussels-Capital Region is atypical compared to the country as a whole. It has many highly qualified jobs while a not insignificant part of the population of Brussels is under-qualified. The unemployment rate of young people remains very high although our region offers many IT jobs which are left vacant. How, therefore, to offer attractive training courses so that young people in Brussels can get qualified and find work?

A smart city’s response to this question is typically based on linking initiatives with positive energies, stemming in particular from the voluntary sector. This is the case of the Coding Bootcamp, “Smart City Scholarship” for which Brussels Smart City has brought together two important IT training actors, each with its own specific profile to get them to work in synergy:

• The asbl MAKS develops the digital skills of Brussels citizens, with a strong presence in Cureghem and in Vieux Molenbeek, through training for young people, the elderly and job seekers;
• The Wagon Brussels provides intensive training courses in web-oriented programming for entrepreneurs and creative minds from around the world.

Training in contact with young entrepreneurs

The aim of the Smart City scholarship project is to get these two worlds to interact. The MAKS will select, subsidise and provide support to 5 young people, who are jobless or with limited financial resources, so that they can complete their programming training at the Wagon. These young people from Brussels will join 20 young entrepreneurs from around the world, to take part together in the Coding Bootcamp which will be held from 17 October to 16 December 2016 on the premises of Co.Station.

For 9 weeks, every day, from 9.00 to 19.00, the participants of this Coding Bootcamp will learn to handle the programming languages of HTML, CSS, JavaScript, SQL, Ruby, Rails, etc. to prototype and bring their ideas to life. By the end of their training, the Wagon students will themselves have developed several web applications. They will therefore be able, if they so wish, to start a promising career, for example as a front-end / back-end or full-stack developer, ideally in a start-up. Or continue down the entrepreneurial route, by launching their own digital business, since they will now be able to understand what’s involved and the surrounding issues.