Call of projects: Jobs of tomorrow

Since 2014 The Orange Foundation is committed to an ambitious approach around digital education to give new opportunities to young people and women in social and professional life drawing on the full potential of digital technology.

At the beginning of the FabLab movement in France, we knew that this concept could be a strong answer to face the economic and social difficulties of young people. Faithful to our core values, we wanted to act in the field of digital solidarity education. That’s why we have developed the concept of Solidarity FabLab for young people (out of the school system, looking for a job, supported by integration associations, etc.) as a lever for their professional project. Today, the Orange Foundation supports 170 Solidarity FabLabs in 23 countries.

To go further, the Orange Group, always attentive to societal needs, has built a strategic plan which puts equality and the environment in the spotlight. That’s why the Group has decided to launch the Orange Digital Center (ODC) program in all the countries. This societal commitment program focused on digital equality, will be organized in a third place included a school, an incubator and a fablab.

The Orange Foundation is convinced that the FabLabs are innovating learning places and creation of solutions to societal challenges. And so, they could be forerunners of the jobs of tomorrow such as upcycler, valorist, lowtech technician, eco designer, roboticist, ... We wish to support this dynamic and we are offering you this call for projects so that you can build pre-qualifying paths in FabLab on the job of tomorrow you identified, as well as an educational toolbox and the training of trainers. These different career paths will be offered in the Solidarity FabLab of ODCs and will also be made available on our open source library for those who wish to implement them.

Our objective remains the same: to make easy young people the access at innovative professions or work opportunities, to develop new skills and to boost their employability. So you will help us to make Solidarity Fablabs an outstanding actor for digital inclusion, social and professional integration, and a tool to meet the objectives of sustainable development.

The framing elements of the call for projects

FabLabs or innovating training centers are invited to submit a project comprising the following elements:

• Engineering: Offer a prequalification career path for young people using the tools of the fablab.
• Toolkit: Create an educational toolbox for Fabmanagers
• Transfer of Skills: carry out 6 training sessions for trainers with all Fabmanagers and technicians from international ODCs, including 2 in English (translation solutions will be provided if necessary). It’s important they appropriate all the content to teach it in turn to new leaners

It is important that the project describes the key points:

• The training course, the content, duration, objectives of the training, the level prerequisites of the fabmanager if necessary, the skills acquired by the beneficiaries, job opportunities
• An educational toolbox: content of a reference course (content, target profession and skills of the fabmanager, etc.), the FabLab’s materials that will be used, the conditions of implementation, the machines and the necessary educational tools, administrative documents (attendance sheet), a method of valuing acquired skills
• The skills transfer method

If your project is selected by the committee, we’ll ask you to detail these elements during 1st semester 2022.
Fabmanagers training sessions will start in the 2nd semester 2022.

The FabLab must have the status of an association or NGO (which can establish a tax receipt for donation in France) and be located in one of the countries where Orange is present.

The budget for this call for projects is € 250k, it will only concern the subject of this call.
NB: this call for projects is complementary to the other calls for projects of the Foundation. You can also apply to the others.