The pandemic was a chance for Luxembourg tech training platform Women in Digital Empowerment to rethink its focus. Managing director Marina Andrieu explains why the not for profit went from supporting girls and women in tech to focusing on digital skills for women and men, gender equality and entrepreneurship as a SIS.
Nine years ago two like-minded women, Marina Andrieu and Marie-Adelaide Leclercq-Olhagaray, noticed a lack of female representation in the Luxembourg tech scene. In a bid to boost diversity, they started organising free coding workshops and events on a voluntary basis.
“We wanted to see more women in the startup space in Luxembourg. We do have a few good cases, but not many and if you follow the news, there’s only one woman-led startup raising funds per year,” says Andrieu.
The two established Women in Digital Empowerment (WIDE) a not-for-profit (asbl) and four years after their first events, they professionalised their work and hired staff.
But it was not enough. “Statistics show that the number of girls choosing technology studies over the past ten years has not changed,” laments Andrieu, adding: “We spoke to teenagers and realised that a lot of girls are interested in technology subjects. A typical example is a good science student but when she goes to university, she studies medicine.”
“We want to be able to spend more time and resources with individuals who are willing to make gender equality and digital empowerment happen.
Marina Andrieu
Towards A New Model
Having begun with adults and teenagers, WIDE needed to focus its efforts on encouraging girls to explore technology at a younger age.
“It was a bit far from our initial scope of work […] We realised the problem is more systemic. A tiny organisation like ours wasn’t going to solve it.”
The pandemic put a halt to events and accelerated the need to find a new model that would broaden WIDE’s reach and have a direct impact on individuals. The answer the team settled on was to create a societal impact company (SIS). Launched in spring 2022, Andrieu explained that as a SIS, WIDE can now offer services, something that was not previously possible as an asbl. It means they can respond to employer demand for training in digital skills. “I think that we are experts in this field: we’ve been organising coding classes for nearly ten years and were the very first to do this outside of the formal education system.”
A second branch is gender equality training for employers and individuals, and the third is entrepreneurship.
“We want to work with a few entrepreneurs to give them individual support because we’ve organised events, which inspire people to start their own business,” the managing director said.
The structural change will have a strong impact on the funding model of the organisation. Previously, it focused on offering free subsidised or very low-cost events. In future, it will be financed in a hybrid manner through external funding and revenues raised from the new services. “We realised that our work wasn’t always valued. We want to be able to spend more time and resources with individuals who are willing to make it happen.”
In the coming weeks, WIDE will release its new catalogue of activities as a SIS. New features include a full week of coding in HTML, CSS and JavaScript in partnership with the House of Training. Sessions will be open to men and women and will be offered on a more regular basis. Some targeted programmes, such as the coding for kids, will remain free. Find out more about WIDE as a SIS.
