Over 20% of Europeans are young, unemployed and mostly unaware of the fact that by 2015, about 800,000 vacancies for ICT related jobs will remain open if job seekers do not acquire the ICT skills demanded by the industry. To reduce this mismatch between demand and supply, the 2013 “Get Online Week” campaign (www.getonlineweek.eu) to be held at Telecentre-Europe on 18-24 March 2013 will focus on youth through activities that will encourage them to take up a career in ICT.
 
Get Online Week 2013 will happen in about 10,000 European ICT learning centers (also known as telecenters) at public libraries, NGOs, schools and municipal organizations located in both urban and rural areas. National campaign partners from almost 30 countries have joined efforts and will make use of innovative employability tools to direct more young people into computing qualifications. During the campaign, young unemployed people will be encouraged to take up industry-based trainings and will be informed about certification schemes that can recognize their informally acquired skills.
 
The campaign is organized by Telecentre-Europe, an umbrella organization that represents 37 local network organizations from 27 European countries and is supported by the Get Online Week Alliance – a group formed by Accenture, Liberty Global and Microsoft. To conduct Get Online Week locally, national campaign partners have created multi-stakeholders coalitions with local public authorities, ICT industries, schools and universities in a joint effort to attract young people to ICT.
The Get Online Week campaign is taking place for the third consecutive year in Bulgaria. This year, everyone willing to take part in Get Online Week 2013 can do it by testing free of charge their basic IT knowledge. The Skillage test is part of My Online Journey theme (www.skillage.eu). It answers the question “Are you IT ready to be employed?” Partners of the initiative include the Electronic Communication Networks and Information Systems (ECNIS) Executive Agency at the Ministry of Transport, Information Technology and Communications, the Bulgarian Library and Information Association (BLIA) and the Glob@l Libraries – Bulgaria Program.
If you want to take part in Get Online Week and do the test, please go to www.skillage.eu. The website provides a Bulgarian language version of the test.