DLI Initiatives – Page 5 – Digital Leadership Institute

13 December 2021

Move It Forward+ in Luxembourg

*The Hackathon “Restart for female digital starters“, part of the Erasmus+ Move It Forward+ project, took place on Saturday, November 13th 2021 at the Technoport SA in Belval.

Move it Forward+ is an Erasmus+ project that aims to support women who want to be entrepreneurs. Indeed, women’s entrepreneurship has been hit hard by the pandemic and this collaborative event is an excellent opportunity to launch new business ideas in the context of economic recovery. Four similar Hackathons are currently being organised in Europe by our partners: France, Belgium, Romania, Croatia and Lithuania.

All day long, thirty participants and volunteer coaches worked together to develop the different ideas. Business Model Canvas, market research or UX Design: the project leaders were able to benefit from the expertise and support of their peers to take their ideas to the next level.

After a presentation of the Move It Forward+ project and pitching of ideas, the work began, with six projects. Between a few cups of coffee and a piece of fruit, everyone gave their best, all in a studious and productive atmosphere.

The lunch break was an opportunity to recharge the batteries and to exchange with the whole group.

“The presence of the qualified coaches at the event gave me courage to pitch my idea and helped me build confidence to consider entrepreneurship as a career option.”, said one of the participants.

In the afternoon, the work continued and each project progressed at its own pace. At the end of the afternoon, it was time to wrap up the projects and prepare the pitches.

Three projects were rewarded with a jury composed of Nizar Ayed, Anne-Claire Buléon and Guylaine Bouquet:

Best pitch: “Friendly Advice”, which aims to help students and newcomers solve their problems of settling in Luxembourg thanks to student volunteers and good samaritans who seek to build community and help newcomers and other young people better integrate into Luxembourg by offering their advice.”

Best innovative project: “Femart Gallery”, which is a web gallery platform where female artists can share and sell creations to increase their visibility in the digital world with non-fungible tokens (NFTs).

Best impact project: “Childs Play”, which aims to create a safe discussion platform among young children to educate them regarding the better use of social media.

Our winners of the day will therefore have the opportunity to follow a four-month personalised mentoring programme in order to make their projects a reality.

It is unanimous that this Hackathon was a success, and was beneficial for both the participants and their coaches, and we hope that these collaborations will bring new perspectives.

Congratulations to all our participants for their involvement, their motivation and their work during this day, congratulations to our coaches who were very professional and caring, and thanks to our jury, the choice of the winners was not easy!

This article originally appeared on MIF+ partner WIDE‘s website.

1 November 202114 March 2025

DLI Update – Fall 2021

*Entrepreneurship and Art powered by Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics

14 September – UNIDO Women and Modern Technologies Event (Online): Cheryl Miller Van Dÿck, DLI Founding Director, contributed to a webinar organized by the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO), entitled Women and modern technologies in restoring sustainability and building resilience in the aftermath of the COVID-19 crisis, which took place online on 14 September 2021. Outcomes of the webinar will be shared at the Multi-stakeholder global dialogue on emerging opportunities for women in the digital age, at the third Eurasian Women’s Forum (EAWF), on 15 October 2021 in St. Petersburg.

14-15 September – ICT Spring (Luxembourg & Online): On 14 September 2021, Cheryl Miller Van Dÿck, DLI Founding Director, provided a keynote presentation on the subject of A Digital Spring for Women Entrepreneurs, as part of the annual ICT Spring event, taking place 14-15 September in Luxembourg and online. Complementary passes for this event may be found here.

29 September – W Closing Event (Finland & Online): DLI Founding Director, Cheryl Miller Van Dÿck, gave a keynote presentation at the closing event of the W-Power project, empowering women entrepreneurs in sparsely populated communities, taking place online on 29 September 2021 .

7 October – WEgate Summit (Brussels & Online): On 7 October, Cheryl Miller Van Dÿck, DLI Founding Director, contributed to a high-level breakfast briefing at the annual WEgate Summit, on the subject of WE are the Next Generation, taking place in Brussels and online.

19-22 October – Global Marketing Summit (Online): 19-22 October 2021, Cheryl Miller Van Dÿck, DLI Founding Director, gave a keynote presentation at the Global Marketing Summit 2021, which took place online for an audience of over 5000 participants, on the subject of Diversity, Equity & Inclusion: Building Forward Better.

27 October – Fondation Lance d’Afrique Burundi (Online): Cheryl Miller Van Dÿck, DLI Founding Director, joined Fondation-LAB Summit on Social Enterprise for Economic Empowerment: An African Woman’s Perspective, where she provided a keynote presentation on the topic of Building Forward Better: Women, Technology & Entrepreneurship.

30-31 October – G20 Summit (Rome & Online): On 30-31 October 2021, Cheryl Miller Van Dÿck, DLI Founding Director, joined the 2021 G20 Summit in Rome as Head of the EU W20 Delegation and Co-chair of the Digital Working Group for Women20 Italia 2021, the women’s stakeholder engagement group to the 2021 G20 meetings in Italy.

Be sure to visit our Calendar and Outreach Activities page to keep up with DLI events and activities! You can also and sign up for the DLI Newsletter and follow us on Facebook, Twitter & Instagram!

9 September 202114 March 2025

Women4Afghanistan

The recent withdrawal of the United States from Afghanistan after twenty years of occupation created a power vacuum and resurgence of domestic forces that has triggered a humanitarian crisis. The clamping down on human rights and freedoms, especially impacting girls and women, is forcing flight of hundreds of thousands of Afghan nationals to other parts of the globe. Some of the most high profile evacuations have been of the Afghan Girls Robotics and Girls Soccer teams. There are thousands of harrowing evacuation stories, not all of which have been successful, and countless more at-risk girls and women are still living in uncertainty in Afghanistan.

In her role as Head of EU Delegation to the G20 Women20 stakeholder interest group, Cheryl Miller, DLI Director, played an instrumental role in delivering a Declaration of Support for Afghan Women and Girls to G20 leaders, including EC President von der Leyen and US President Biden, ahead of a 24 August urgent G7 meeting on Afghanistan. President von der Leyen’s remarks there focused on the plight of Afghan girls and women: “We need to help mostly those who are at immediate risk. And those are women, girls and children, who make up the vast majority of internally displaced people – 80% of the internally displaced people in Afghanistan are women and girls.”

As Afghan refugees attempt to make their way to other countries, they will need support – for evacuating from Afghanistan, arriving to a new location, and in assimilating long-term as economic, political and social actors in their adopted homes. An initiative called Women4Afghanistan was launched by Anne Ravanona and Katharina Miller, EU delegates to the G20/W20, in order to rally support for Afghan girls and women on this path. More information on how to contribute to this critical work may be found here:

http://www.women4afghanistan.org/

As Afghan refugees arrive and begin the process of integrating into their new home communities, it will be up to programs like AMIF and the ATHENA project to specifically support Afghan women and their sister refugees from around the world, by delivering on its remit to promote entrepreneurship by women migrants. DLI and the ATHENA partners look forward to the opportunity to support the women and girls of Afghanistan, and women migrants from all over the world, in integrating and achieving financial independence for these most vulnerable.

30 July 202114 March 2025

DLI Update – Summer 2021

The DLI Board are actively involved in outreach activities with partners and stakeholders around the world that promote ESTEAM* leadership by girls and women. Find out more below about our outreach activities in Summer 2021, including participation at the G20 Italy 2021 Women20 Summit in Rome where the G20 Italy 2021 Women20 Communiqué was delivered with contributions by all delegations including the EU led by Cheryl Miller Van Dÿck. For upcoming activities by DLI and its partners please visit here, and have a look at our calendar for events organised by DLI.

*Entrepreneurship and Art powered by Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics

4 June – “AI and Business” BSBI Café Scientifique (Online): On 4 June, Cheryl Miller Van Dÿck, DLI Founding Director, joined an online panel on the topic of “AI and Business,” as part of the Café Scientifique series hosted by Berlin School of Business and Innovation.

17 June – EU Parliament Workshop “Digital Gender Gap” (Online): On 17 June, Cheryl Miller Van Dÿck, DLI Founding Director, spoke at an online workshop on The Digital Gender Gap, addressing the subject of “Access to Funding for Women Entrepreneurs in the Digital Ecosystem,” for Members of European Parliament Committee on Industry, Research & Energy (ITRE) Committee.

23 June – “Impact of the W20 in the Lives of European Women” Panel (Online): Cheryl Miller Van Dÿck, DLI Founding Director, joined a panel discussion, with opening remarks by Vice Presidents of the EU Parliament and European Commission, on the “Impact of the W20 in the Lives of European Women,” hosted by the G20 Women20.

13-15 July – G20 Women20 Italy Summit (Rome & Online): On 13-15 July, 2021 G20 Italy Women20, the women’s stakeholder engagement group to the G20 meetings in Italy, hosted the 2021 Women20 Summit in Rome, Italy. Cheryl Miller Van Dÿck, DLI Founding Director, participated at the Summit as Head of the EU W20 Delegation and Co-chair of the W20 Italy Digital Working Group.

Be sure to visit our Calendar and Outreach Activities page to keep up with DLI events and activities! You can also and sign up for the DLI Newsletter and follow us on Facebook, Twitter & Instagram!

21 July 2021

Digital Startup – Let’s get women on board!

*Faced with male-female inequalities in the field of digital technology and entrepreneurship, Led By HER will organize a weekend Move It Forward – MIF – dedicated to these two issues in December 2021. This is a European-scale event supported by the Erasmus+ program and organized simultaneously in six different European countries. Women of all ages and backgrounds are invited. This unique event in France will have as its theme, female leadership in society and in business.

Gender equality, a reality or a myth? There is an in-between, but one thing is certain: we do not live in a world where women are totally equal to men, especially in the professional sphere. Led By HER has decided to focus all its energy on supporting women entrepreneurs. This is a major challenge insofar as only 2.6% of entrepreneurial projects in France are led by women compared to 88.3% by men and the rest by mixed teams[1]. Women have as many ideas as men, that’s not the problem, they just lack help and self-confidence. Female socialization encourages caution rather than risk taking. This sociologically verified fact gives a definite advantage to women over men with regard to business creation. Entrepreneurial projects led by women are more likely to pass the three-year mark than those of men. In parallel with this entrepreneurial challenge, women suffer from a lack of digital training. Once again their socialization and implicit societal norms can explain this phenomenon. While this digital and IT sector is growing and becoming essential, women are often sidelined for lack of training. The right to access to knowledge, education and training is the same for all, we note here an inequality of treatment and perception between men and women. Thus, digitalization and entrepreneurship are two crucial issues for the integration of women in the professional sphere.

Let’s fight together against this inequality on our scale. A European initiative supported by the Erasmus + program brought together Led by HER in France, WIDE in Luxembourg, the Digital Leadership institute in Belgium, the Northtown Technology Park in Lithuania, the Centre of Technical Culture in Croatia and the Professional Foundation in Romania. These European associations work for women’s rights, professional integration and the digitization of marginalized populations. The latter have joined forces to offer a Move It Forward event in their respective countries. It was in 2014 in Belgium that the first took place and the success was such that the operation was repeated many times across Europe. In France, the “Move It Forward for Woman in Leadership – female digital starters” will be the first in Paris, a unique and unprecedented event.

It is indeed a weekend where the participants unite around digital projects carried by some of them. These projects aim to find concrete and digital solutions to promote female leadership in business and in society. Working groups are formed in order to best develop the projects selected at the beginning of the weekend. In addition to increased collaboration in benevolence and mutual listening, women have the chance to be followed by professionals. The coaches guide them in their entrepreneurial adventure, the mentors give them practical information and finally experts train them in digital technology. Thus, regardless of training or age, all women are invited to participate.

At the end of this weekend, prizes are awarded to the best projects. These rewards are tailor-made to allow women to continue their adventure following this weekend. In addition, professional support and work teams are strongly encouraged to continue their efforts in what they have undertaken during these two days. In previous editions, many projects continued to develop and flourished.

This weekend therefore includes a double opportunity for women, the acquisition of digital skills and the development of projects responding to the challenge of women’s leadership in society. This is an opportunity not to be missed!

[1] According to the Sista study of top recipients from the leading 9 investment funds in France.

Digitalisation, entrepreneuriat, incluons les femmes à l’échelle européenne !

*This article originally appeared in French on MIF+ partner Led By HER’s website, written by Gwladys Chanard with translated title “Digitalization, Entrepreneurship, let’s include women at the European Level!”