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Digital Opportunity – EU Funding for new pilot project providing 6000 digital internships

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The European Commission’s DG Connect has launched the Digital Opportunity pilot project to provide digital internships to students across Europe.

What do you need to know?

Implementation through Erasmus+

Fund: Horizon2020

Target group:

  • Cross-border (students and companies from 2 different countries)
  • 6000 students (last year of their Bachelor/ recent graduates)
  • Higher education (no apprenticeships at least in the pilot phase)
  • 3-4 months traineeships (min 2 max 12 month

Objective: develop different ICT skills in practice

  1. ICT specialist skills (engineering, ICT experts)
  2. Digital skills for business: (SAP, data analytics, marketing tools, etc.)

Budget: 10 MEUR – 500 EUR/student/month on average

Timeline of the Pilot:

  1. Communication campaign: autumn 2017 – spring 2018
  2. Official launch of the project: December 2017 (or January 2018) at the Annual Conference on Digital Skills by Digital Economy and Society Commissioner Mariya Gabriel
  3. Publishing calls for universities: February 2018
  4. Start of the pilot, traineeships: June 2018

The European Commission will provide funding to the National Agencies that coordinate Erasmus+ and then the National Agencies redistribute the money among applying universities and third level institutions. Then it is the company or organisation who select the trainees through Drop’pin and ErasmusIntern.org

ErasmusIntern and Drop'pin are both already operating so companies can start publishing their offers. In the next months an ad-hoc flag for the Digital Opportunity Traineeships will be integrated in these platforms.

The EC provides the financial support and the administrative framework as they have created the databases and platforms – but students and companies will still need to register and search themselves.

Trainees will receive a wage on average of EUR 500 per month as a grant but the exact amount depends on the country.

The Digital Opportunity has a great marketing and CSR potential, meaning that the initiative is raising awareness on the importance of on-the-job training for digital skills and it can also attract more students to start a career in STEM.

 

Photo from European Commission 2017

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