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Since 2015, Konica Minolta has been sponsoring the NGO “Czechitas”, running a project to support entrepreneurship and IT knowledge capacity building for women in cooperation with the worldwide organisation “Impact Hub”. Having started in 2015/2016 with a pilot project in the Czech Republic, the project was extended to Germany in 2016/2017 and will now also be running its 3rd phase in 2017/2018 in Poland and Austria.
IT is still a male-dominated domain. Studies found that the percentage of female employees ranges from 15% to 40% in OECD countries. With the sponsorship, Konica Minolta supports educational one-day workshops, where students learn programming, web development, graphic design and data analysis. The workshops show female pupils, students, professionals, entrepreneurs and career changers a new perspective in the IT environment and focus on how IT topics are approached and implemented in a corporate environment.
Furthermore, Konica Minolta provides its own IT expertise by way of different company speakers at the workshops. The first workshops started in the Czech Republic in September this year. A total of 240 women will be trained in this country. Next year, Germany will follow in January, Austria in February and Poland in March.
Great demand for workshops
The cooperation with Konica Minolta has been taking place since 2015. Within three years, a number of workshops took place in the Czech Republic and Germany. In total, over 50 workshops and courses, attended by more than 1,000 women, have been organised through Konica Minolta’s partnership.
More information:
https://www.czechitas.cz/en/
About Czechitas
Czechitas is a non-profit organisation established on 20 May 2014 which inspires and educates new talents for stronger diversity and competitiveness in technology. In the summer of 2015, they were awarded the Social Impact Award for their social contribution. They have started to work on the long-term sustainability of their business and the future of Czechitas. Along with Keboola, Czechitas created DataGirls – courses on data analytics. They realised that the choice of future employment needed to be made even sooner, so they quickly turned to the academy programming project, which educates teachers and children in primary and secondary schools. In 2015, their founder Dita was ranked among the New Europe 100 challengers, in other words, among the TOP one hundred innovators from Central and Eastern Europe who are trying to make the world a better place by using digital technology.
About Impact Hub
IMPACT HUB is an inspiring workspace (approx. 6,000 m2 in the Czech Republic) that includes technical equipment.
It is a vibrant community of change makers and innovators (more than 1,100 members) who work together to connect people, ideas and financial support.
It has a team of 64 people (32 in Prague, 20 in Brno,12 in Ostrava) that includes:
a special team dedicated to community support and development;
a special events and programming team (annually, they host over 550 major events in Prague alone); and
a dedicated team for incubation and acceleration activities.
About Konica Minolta Business Solutions Europe
Konica Minolta Business Solutions Europe GmbH, based in Langenhagen, Germany, is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Konica Minolta Inc., Tokyo, Japan, forming part of its Business Technologies business area. As a leading global services provider in the field of IT- and document processes as well as digital production printing solutions the company excels in services-led business consulting, implementation and management and provides a range of world-leading printing systems and solutions. In this context, Konica Minolta’s Optimized Print Services concept (OPS) combines consultancy, hardware, software implementation, and operation in order to enhance business process efficiency and cost-effectiveness. To support customers optimally with powerful and sustainable solutions, technology leader Konica Minolta continuously invests in research and development work and regularly sets new standards. Konica Minolta Business Solutions Europe is represented by subsidiaries and distributors in more than 80 countries in Europe, Central Asia, the Middle East and Africa. With over 9,700 employees (as of March 2017), Konica Minolta Europe earned net sales of over EUR 2.4 billion in financial year 2016/17.
For further information about the company, please visit: www.konicaminolta.eu.
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