ICT4Women strengthens the women tech community in Cahul and stimulates entrepreneurship

More and more women from Cahul are choosing to build a career in the digital field, in order to have well-paid jobs, flexible conditions and numerous development possibilities. As the IT industry continues to expand and evolve in the south of the country, women are benefiting from various educational opportunities. These include the ICT4Women programme, which offers courses in Social Media Marketing (SMM), Copywriting and Web Development. 43 women have successfully completed the program and are now ready to advance in their chosen fields. the opportunity to choose the Social Media Marketing course and I consider it to be a valuable investment in my professional and personal development!",

Maria Pădure is 28 years old and being on childcare leave decided to take the Social Media Marketing course, to better understand how social media platforms work and what are the ways in which they can be used to promote a company, build a brand and develop an online community.

said Maria.

The program organisers believe that thanks to the ICT4 Women program, the participants are now more confident in themselves and determined to achieve their goals in the digital field.

"The programs that we have successfully created in Cahul are those that offer knowledge that stands in the middle between information technologies and another specialty. We are happy to have a large number of girls to make it to the end", said Irina Oriol, Deputy Director for Education, EU4Moldova: Startup City Cahul, ATIC.

opportunity to do something new, maybe change your career, earn extra money or make a contribution to the community",

"I'm here today to congratulate you, to encourage you and to say how impressed I am that you have taken these courses, gained new skills and thus have the

declared Catarina Nilsson, Program Manager, First Secretary, Embassy of Sweden in

Chișinău.

The ICT4Women program is in its second edition and is part of the EU4Moldova: Startup City Cahul, implemented by the Association of Information Technologies and Communications (ATIC) and financed by the European Union in partnership with the Embassy of Sweden.

202 pupils and 58 teachers from all over the country participated in the biggest coding marathon in the Republic of Moldova, organised as part of "Tekwill Junior

Ambassadors". The contest was organised simultaneously in Chișinău, Cahul and Bălți. After a rigorous selection, 15 best programmers were selected for awarding.

Among the winners of the marathon is Laurențiu Bodlev, a student of the "Iulia Hașdeu" College from Cahul, who won the first place in the south of the country. Passionate about the IT field, he has been studying the C/C++ language for more than 3 years.

"Today's marathon was very interesting, we used many algorithms, such as dynamic programming, graphs and others. In the future I would like a profession in IT as this is the field of the future", says Laurențiu.

In the marathon organised in the Southern region, the second place was occupied by Dumitru Șerbina, a student of the "Iulia Hașdeu" College from Cahul, and the third place went to Dinu Pleșu, a student of the Theoretical High School "Constantin Spătaru" from Leova.

"Everything depends on the student. If the student has an algorithmic thinking, which has already been developed in other subjects, then definitely it is also easier for the teacher to be able to train him/her, to develop the logic that the student needs to apply in solving problems with the help of programs," said Mihai Zanet, teacher of mathematics and computer science at the Enichioi Gymnasium in the Cantemir rayon.

It should be noted that each of the students who participated in the coding marathon follows the course "Programming Algorithms in C/C++", which is currently taught in 333 educational institutions in the country.

“I am very glad to see what the project has achieved in terms of promoting the STEAM education. I hope that this positive trend of STEAM education in the southern region will continue with the support of the project and I would like to congratulate the team behind it and wish them good luck", said Boris Filipov, Project Manager at the EU Delegation to the Republic of Moldova.

The "Tekwill Junior Ambassadors" competition is held in partnership with the Ministry of Education and Research, with financial support provided by the European Union and Sweden.

The Tech Coffee monthly editions organised within the EU4Moldova: Startup City Cahul project have been taking place in Cahul for over a year and a half. These are networking sessions where the tech community in the region has the opportunity to meet national and international experts from various fields of the IT industry. The special guest of the first edition of Tech Coffee in 2023 was Ion Horneț, Commercial Director of Simpals, who presented to entrepreneurs from Cahul the role of digital tools in attracting customers. Today, businesses are closer than ever to potential customers. The Internet offers the opportunity to promote products and services anywhere in the world, and the way digital tools are implemented is often decisive for the success of a business. This is confirmed by Ion Horneț, Commercial Director of Simpals, a company that, for 20 years, has developed over 110 projects and products, sold on the markets of 57 countries.

"In the digital age, businesses need to adapt at an ever-faster pace to keep up with the competition. This is where digital tools come to their aid, the benefits of which are streamlining, automating processes, attracting customers, meeting their expectations and, of course, increasing profitability. It's basically everything an entrepreneur could want"

said Ion Horneț, Commercial Director of Simpals.

At Tech Coffee, a monthly event in Cahul, Ion Horneț talked about his own experience and came up with various recommendations.

"The Cahul region is rapidly becoming one of the main points in terms of technologies, technological entrepreneurship and the connection to everything that means IT and STEAM education. We have students, pupils, young entrepreneurs interested in everything that means innovation, and what we want is to offer them as many opportunities as possible to interact with specialists in the field. We succeed in this including in the Tech Coffee editions, where we address various topics every month: from digital education to artificial intelligence and cyber security", said Corina Andronic, Deputy Director of the EU4Moldova: Startup City Cahul project.

EU4Moldova: Startup City Cahul is a project financed by the European Union, in partnership with Sweden and implemented by ATIC. Within this, several investments are made in the region to strengthen the potential of the digital economy and increase the local workforce in the ICT field.