Category: Past Events

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E.C.H.O. Project Launches in Vienna to Amplify Youth Voices Across Europe

On 6 December 2025 in Vienna, Cheryl Miller, DLI Director, joined the kickoff meeting of E.C.H.O. (Amplifying Youth Voices for a Stronger Europe), an Erasmus+ youth cooperation project implemented by a consortium of nine experienced youth organisations from nine European countries. Coordinated by VABCKJS-EU (Austria) as Lead Partner, the project brings together COOLIVING (France), Casa Eslava (Spain), IVAIGO (Lithuania), Hello Youth (Sweden), ECCO (Norway), Digital Leadership Institute (Belgium), San Giuseppe Onlus (Italy), and K-GEM (Turkey). Together, the partnership combines complementary expertise in youth participation, civic engagement, inclusion, digital learning, and policy dialogue.

The project is structured around clear coordination and shared responsibility, with each partner contributing through defined work packages and pilot activities across Europe. Within E.C.H.O., the Digital Leadership Institute supports the project’s digital and participation-focused dimensions, contributing to online engagement, dissemination, and the creation of a sustainable digital space for youth voices. As implementation progresses, the consortium is excited to see this strong transnational collaboration grow into a lasting youth participation network, amplifying young people’s voices and strengthening their role in shaping a more inclusive and democratic Europe.

Project Timeline at a Glance

  • Dec 2025–Mar 2026 – Project launch & coordination
  • Apr–Dec 2026 – Youth exchanges & learning mobility
  • Jan–Sep 2027 – Digital hub & youth-led actions
  • Oct–Dec 2027 – Final events & long-term network

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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.

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Refugee Women Move It Forward

As part of Code Week Europe 2016, on 15-16 October in Brussels, sixty teen and adult women–ranging in age from 15 to 55 and representing upwards of twenty-five nationalities–gathered at the Digital Leadership Institute’s inQube space for a Move It Forward “female digital starters” weekend. Through expert support and hands-on workshops on web development, app coding, the cloud and CRM, participants built and launched their own enterprises in support of women refugees and asylum seekers in Europe.

Ms. Anna Zobnina, Chair of the European Network of Migrant Women, who gave a keynote and took part in the event, shared the following: “When extremism and poverty attack women forcing them to flee their home, we should attack extremism and poverty by empowering refugee women to rebuild their dignified lives. And if we want to win, we have to be strategic and use the digital technology to fight violence and discrimination that women on the move face at every step of their journeys.”

Attendees of the Move It Forward event, twenty-five percent of whom were refugee women from across Europe, enjoyed an entire weekend dedicated to learning digital and entrepreneurial skills taught by DLI and its world-class technology partners, including Amazon Web Services, Onboard CRM and MIT AppInventor for Android.

On the final day of the event, the most innovative projects were selected for further incubation at inQube, and recognized later in the week at a European Parliament event hosted by KAGIDER, the Turkish women’s entrepreneurship association.  Recognized projects included:

Ms. Sanem Oktar, KAGIDER President said: “As the largest women’s entrepreneurship network in Turkey, KAGIDER is thrilled to ‘Move It Forward’ for female digital starters. We share the vision of economically empowering women to drive positive change in the world, and of enabling them to use technology to do that. We are therefore excited to showcase the successes of Move It Forward Brussels 2016 and to build on this with Move It Forward Istanbul in 2017.”

The first Move It Forward weekend took place in January 2016 with support of the Brussels Capital Region. Four of the final projects received expert support from DLI for a period of five months, and several projects are continuing today. To build on its success in Brussels, DLI and its partners are now launching Move It Forward in other cities around the globe.

The two-day Move It Forward event is a flagship of the inQube female digital accelerator, a DLI initiative whose mission is to redress under-representation of women in tech startup.

Event Sponsors and Partners

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First Ada Award Winners Celebrated at ICT 2013

On 7 November 2013 at Europe’s largest ICT event, ICT 2013, Ms. Neelie Kroes, Vice President of the European Commission responsible for the Digital Agenda, announced the winners of Europe’s first-ever Digital Girl, Digital Woman and Digital Impact Organisation of the Year Awards. Affectionately known as the “Ada Awards” after Ada Lovelace, in their inaugural year the Awards enjoy the patronage of Vice President Kroes and are an official pledge to the Grand Coalition for Digital Skills and Jobs in Europe.

“I am so happy to congratulate these talented women and girls who have achieved great things in ICT,” said Vice President Kroes of the first group of Ada Award-winners. “And I hope they go on to inspire more women to explore the digital sector,” she added.

 

For distinguishing themselves in digital studies and careers, and for promoting greater participation of girls and women in digital sectors, Vice President Kroes recognised the following individuals and organisations for the 2013 Ada Awards in Europe:

Sasha is founder of both the European Centre for Women and Technology and the Bulgarian Centre of Women in Technology, having launched the latter at end 2012. During her career as a global executive for Hewlett-Packard, Sasha succeeded in attracting key investment in the ICT sector in Bulgaria that resulted in thousands of new digital jobs. She is responsible for launching and actively contributing to a multitude of outreach activities that aim to inspire girls and women to pursue digital careers in Bulgaria and beyond.

14-year-old Amy has been coding for three years and has inspired people of all ages with her keynote speeches at the Raspberry Jamboree, Campus Party EU and Wired: Next Generation. She teaches older pupils how to code during her school lunch breaks and with the Manchester Girl Geeks.

Lune develops her own games and interactive movies with CoderDojo. She designs robots and dreams of becoming an engineer. At nine years of age, she is already a true digital visionary and has a track-record of getting girls her age excited about digital endeavor.

 

The Hochschule für Technik und Wirtschaft is Berlin’s largest University of applied sciences. In 2009, HTW inaugurated an innovative women-only bachelor program, “Frauenstudiengang Informatik und Wirtschaft”, aimed at increasing leadership for women in technology. The program accepts forty applicants every year and celebrated its first graduating class in 2012.

As part of their award, each girl finalist for the first-ever European Adas received a brand-new HP Slate7 from Hewlett-Packard, and all the finalists are eligible to spend shadowing days at different SAP locations around the world in the coming year. The Award partnership is grateful to HP, SAP and Facebook for their contribution to the European Ada Awards.

The Ada Awards are an initiative of Zen Digital Europe in partnership with the Council of European Professional Informatic Societies (CEPIS), DIGITALEUROPE, the European Centre for Women in Technology (ECWT) and European SchoolNet, and were created to celebrate European female talent in digital fields, promote European role models, and recognise organisations that support diversity in digital sectors.

The Ada Award partners view the ICT 2013 celebration as a major milestone in promoting women in digital studies and jobs in Europe, and hope it will ignite more initiatives attracting and retaining women in these sectors in Europe and beyond.

For further information about the Ada Awards and actvities of the Award Partners, please contact us.