Capital Digital

The digital divide between migrants and other disadvantaged minority groups continues to widen. Capital Digital targets three disadvantaged areas of the Brussels Capital Region — Anderlecht, Molenbeek and Schaarbeek — reaching disadvantaged youth and children, primarily with a migration background, who lack access to STEM/IT career paths because of inadequate education, a vicious circle of exclusion, and low 'science capital' in their communities.

Short term: improve essential IT skills of young people and teach them the basics of coding. Long term: raise awareness among disadvantaged target groups of career paths into the IT and tech sector, where they are underrepresented.

Training sessions (3x/year) for young people aged 15-25 to prepare them as e-facilitators, followed by coding camps for children (3x/year) where children learn coding basics and build a simple app, game or programmed robot. Delivered by a partnership of MAKS vzw (e-inclusion), Foyer vzw (integration services) and FEDACTIO vzw (non-formal education), with the Cabinet of the State Secretary for Equal Opportunity and Digitalization in the Brussels Capital Region and advertising agency Duval Guillaume as stakeholders.

The project reports having reached hundreds of young people and children, building their 'science capital' and self-esteem; no quantified outcome evaluation has been conducted ('Evaluation: No').