Last Friday we presented our project ‘HackYourFuture Lab @ Ghent’ to the Ghent deputy mayor for Welfare, Astrid Debruycker. Last year, she called for innovative solutions to specific challenges in Ghent’s society.
With HackYourFuture Lab @ Ghent, we are taking our cooperation with Arteveldehogeschool to a higher level.

Our project consists of three actions:

1. a peer-led programme between HackYourFuture students and Artevelde students HR Management.
   They will help each other with the challenges of looking for work as a newcomer in Belgium.
2. A Hackathon with HackYourFuture students and alumni, and Artevelde students from the graduate degree in programming. Mixed teams will work on the development of web applications and (learn how to) present them to an audience that will consist of experienced developers and players from within the business world.
3. ‘The Agency’, a project office where companies can give web development assignments to HackYourFuture alumni, who can gain paid work experience through coaching on-the-job.

The ultimate goal of our project is to bring refugees and newcomers closer to a sustainable job in the IT sector.

Women in the IT sector
We want HackYourFuture to help address the lack of diversity and inclusion in the IT sector. 40% of our students and alumni are women, and they do very well during the training. Yet, even more than newcomers in general, they experience a lot of barriers in finding a job.

CSR
For ‘The Agency’, we are looking for companies that want to take the step towards employing newcomers. Many players in the IT sector are looking for projects to incorporate their corporate social responsibility. We offer them the chance to contribute to sustainable work, thanks to our project office where we guide our junior web developers in their first assignments.

By demonstrating the hard and soft skills of our community of alumni, we want to lower the barriers for companies who are hesitant to hire new talent.

Are you interested?
Send us an email at contact@hackyourfuture.be