To end this difficult year on a high note let us we present you with the short recollection of three of our success stories.
With the new year approaching, we have started looking back and making account of everything we’ve been through in 2020. All the ups and downs, the unforeseen challenges and unexpected successes, big moments and big learnings.
We decided to give you a short recollection of what we at Codecool are really grateful for today.
There are actually too many things we could mention and too little space for listing all of them. First of all, our invaluable partnerships with our amazing clients surviving our arguably toughest year yet with us. Then the over 1000 new students trusting us with their dreams and ambitions starting in our school this year, and 160 graduates landing their first tech jobs at our partners and our companies. And also our continuously growing international team of 140 colleagues working hard to make everything happen.
We’ve been through together a lot this year.
There are just 3 success stories we would like to mention in more detail below, that make us proud and grateful around this holiday season. The first one is about how we got to help out those fighting the new pandemic in the front line. The second is about how we took part in changing the lives of those losing their jobs as the crisis rolled on. And the third one is how we got invited to shape digital education and vocation strategy in Europe in the coming years.
1. Assisting front-line heroes – saving lives with the national ambulance service
In the beginning of March, Hungarian National Ambulance Service (NAS) were suddenly faced with an unexpected technical challenge. With the global pandemic already full on, their colleagues fighting an increasing demand for urgent medical help and unprecedented health risk in the front line, it turned out they also missedsufficient technical support. Not being able to monitor the real-time stock levels of protective equipment on different locations, the ambulance staff on duty was not sure where they could find masks, gloves and other essential supply at their disposal, on their actual route. Also, supply management lacked the necessary status info to arrange timely stock-up everywhere. This slowed ambulance services down considerably, risking additional lives.
We jumped to help. Our developers created a new app for the ambulance colleagues to report and monitor protective equipment stocks in real-time, by location. We delivered a working prototype of the app in just 2 days and finalised it in another few days. By the end of March it was in use nationwide.
By this time our developers and students have already been working on another app for the ambulance service: tracking the work status of their 8000 employees in real-time, further improving the effectiveness of their front-line work.
We were glad we could help the work of our everyday heroes in our own ways. We are here to help in the future, too.
2. Helping the unemployed to future-proof careers – government supported tech courses
In the shadow of the health crisis, an economic crisis also emerged at the same time. Wide-scale layoffs started and thousands of people found themselves on the street everyday, from one day to another. As an emergency reply, financed from the European Social Fund, the Hungarian government lunched the Redesign Program on 11 May, 2020. In the scope of the Program, unemployed people got the opportunity to attend top quality digital courses free of charge, to build a future-proof, tech career for themselves.
Codecool has applied to take part and was finally selected as one of the partner schools in September. We enrolled over 300 pre-selected students in the following weeks and started their four-month training in October.
We are super proud to be part of this initiative about digitalising Central-European workforce, actually changing individual lives day-by-day.
3. Contributing to a digitalised EU work force – European Software Skills Alliance membership
The skill gap in Europe today is above 50%, meaning that over half of the European workforce needs reskilling to fill open positions. One of the areas with the biggest gap is software development.
To tackle the challenge on strategic level, DIGITALEUROPE and an alliance of 26 software partners launched the European Software Skills Alliance (ESSA), to design and implement the new Software Skills Strategy and vocational curriculum for Europe.
Codecool is proud to have been selected as one of the 26 partners in the Alliance. We will work on creating more flexible, shorter, more diverse educational paths benefitting both individuals growing their digital skills and businesses building their digital future.
Having recollected these stories we are looking forward to a hopefully less challenging, but equally rewarding new year.
We wish you happy holidays with lots of grateful moments looking back and celebrating your own success stories.