Pink Cloud: 1,500 young women from Italy and abroad in Milan to expand their technical and scientific skills

3rd edition of Pink Cloud – Microsoft project aimed at promoting Girls in STEM – will take place in Milan from 19th to 21st May.

150 free courses, 4 Universities involved, 1500 students from all over the world to discover all the opportunities provided by the tech world.

Pre-enrolment starts today at www.nuvolarosa.eu

Just 3% of all female graduates qualifying in ICT disciplines compared to 10% of male graduates


Milan, 23rd April 2015 – Today pre-enrolment starts for the free training offered within Pink Cloud, the project aimed at promoting Girls in STEM to let women be equally represented in the industry, economy and politics.

After the success of the previous editions held in Florence and Rome, this year the initiative will take place in Milan and will continue throughout the whole EXPO season, involving young women from Italy and abroad.

The latest edition was announced today at Palazzo Reale in Milan on the occasion of the international day for “Girls in STEM” (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics).

From May 19th to 21st, 1,500 young Italian and foreign women, aged 17 to 24, will be given the chance to explore the value of technical and scientific training and discover the opportunities offered by the digital world in three days of courses, seminars, workshops, visits to the EXPO, events, networking moments and meetings with companies, during which they will be inspired by the experiences of extraordinary women.

The meetings will be held at the Università Commerciale Luigi Bocconi, Università degli Studi di Milano, Università degli Studi Milano-Bicocca and the Politecnico di Milano.

Young women who are interested can enrol on www.nuvolarosa.eu, online from today both in Italian and English.

“In a country like ours, where youth unemployment has hit 44.2%, it is essential to help young people develop the technical and scientific skills required to be successful. Here in Europe for example, according with ITU data only 19% of ICT Managers are women, compared to the 45% in other industries. Yet the digital market is offering the highest potential in terms of new jobs. Following the same trend, only 3% of European girls just 3% of all female graduated from ICT disciplines, compared to 10% of male graduates and only 9% of app developers are women, despite the fact that there will be skills shortfall in the ICT sector of at least 2 million jobs globally by 2020.” – explains Carlo Purassanta, CEO Microsoft Italy.

For this reason, more than 150 courses in 4 universities in Milan will be held by national and international speakers and will be available to the girls involved completely free of charge: they will span from cloud computing to application development, from Big Data to coding, from digital marketing to social media, right up to the new skills that are useful when approaching the legal profession in the era of social media.

At the end of the courses, the young women will be given a certificate of attendance.

All the information about the courses, their instructors, and the full programme are available from today on the “mobile first” platform nuvolarosa.eu, set up on the Microsoft Azure Cloud architecture and designed to be fully enjoyable on any type of smartphone, tablet or PC.

The Pink cloud is organised by Microsoft, ASUS, Aviva and Accenture, in partnership with UN WOMEN, the United Nations body for Gender Equality and Female Empowerment, UNRIC and ITU, and is sponsored by both the Municipality of Milan and the Lombardy Region, with the support of the Department for Equal Opportunities, the Agency for Digital Italy, and the Ministry of Education, Universities and Research.

RTL 102.5 is working together with Microsoft on this initiative and will allow three girls, selected through the radio’s official website www.rtl.it, to be part of the project and become real reporters for RTL 102.5 and share live the three days of the event.

The project is run in collaboration with Avanade, ING Bank, Intel and Danone Vitasnella.

The event is also associated with Fondazione Cariplo and Fondazione Mondo Digitale.

Over the years the Pink Cloud has helped girls to enter the workforce to an extent that has allowed it to be chosen by UN Women as one of the initiatives selected to celebrate Beijing+20.

The Pink Cloud was launched today by the project’s creator, Roberta Cocco, Director for the Development of National Projects of Microsoft Western Europe, by Cristina Tajani, Council Member for Policies for Work, Economic Development, Universities and Research with Doreen Bogdan Martin, Chief of ITU’s Strategic Planning and Membership Department, the United Nations agency dedicated to ICT.

Carlo Purassanta, CEO of Microsoft Italia discussed how urgent it is to offer young people digital skills with the partners involved in the project: Andrea Galbiati CEO of ASUS, Patrick Dixneuf, CEO of Aviva, Francesca Patellani, Geographic Services Lead and Human Capital & Diversity Manager of Accenture IGEM.

Monica Rancati, Human Resources Director of Microsoft Western Europe then spoke about the profiles that are currently most attractive for companies and discussed them with Anna Di Silverio, CEO of Avanade Italia, Carlo Parmeggiani, Public Sector Director of Intel Southern Europe, Don Koch, CEO of ING Bank Italy.

The digital platform NuvolaRosa.eu will also host the full schedule of events that will be held during the EXPO season and that will be made in collaboration with public and private partners, thanks also to the support of Women for EXPO and Valore D.

 

For further information:

Microsoft – Chiara Ronchetti (Corporate PR) – 02 70392098 – 335 1262049 – [email protected]

Burson Marsteller – Antonella Violante [email protected] – 02 72143811 – Maria Abbatescianni 0272143547 – 3497668034 – [email protected]

 

 

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