State Secretary in the Ministry of Trade, Tourism, and Telecommunications Tatjana Matić has welcomed the beginning of the training in coding for women in Novi Pazar, conducted within the projects of support by the Ministry of Trade, Tourism, and Telecommunications.

She has particularly emphasized the initiative of the Association “Lighthouse” realising this programme, that due to a huge interest and a large number of applying candidates, it receives 30 candidates instead of 20 initially planned. Out of that number 18 candidates are from Novi Pazar, four from Sjenica, four from Raška and four from Tutin.

The project named “IT for women as well” is one of nine approved in the Public Competition for granting the funds to the programmes in the field of developing the information society 2017, on the topic of raising the level of digital literacy and digital competences – retraining and additional trainings of women in the ICT field.

“In the first cycle of the retraining programmes, in the programmes which implementation has already started, it is clear that there is a huge interest of women in this field, since a the number of applying candidates is much bigger than the one initially planned”, says Ms Matić, reminding that another training cycle is planned for the next year.

“Retraining of women in the IT except from the benefit it has for staff building and IT development, it aims at social and economic strengthening of women who are, despite the prejudices, very successful in this field”, says State Secretary.

The programmes were launched also by the Citizen Association “Local Self-Organisation” and Citizen Association Employment ORG from Belgrade, and in the Competition of the Ministry the approval was also given to the programmes to be realised by the Centre for Entrepreneurship from Kragujevac, Vojvodina ICT Cluster from Novi Sad, Centre for Activism from Vranje, Junior Chamber International from Zrenjanin, Novi Sad Women Initiation from Novi Sad, and SEE ICT Association from Belgrade.