Digital Inclusion

Code for Youth

In Luxembourg, one of our consultants, Martin Mbaga, is involved as a co-founder and volunteer in an association that gives training around robotics and coding for youth in Luxembourg, Belgium and Africa. ImpalaBridge association mainly aims to promote digital education for disadvantaged young people in a playful way, through workshops in refugee centers belonging to Caritas, Fedasil, and the Red Cross, among others. Martin does a fantastic job in his spare time and Sogeti Luxembourg supports him by donating IT material to his association.

Training the next generation of coding ninjas

In the UK, Alistair Gerrard, a Sogeti Technical Test Architect, volunteers with CoderDojo – a global network of free, volunteer-led, community-based programming clubs (Dojos) for young people (Ninjas). At the start of 2020, they had 25 Ninjas registered, with 18-20 attending most weeks (they run two-hour sessions every other Sunday). In the current situation, they’ve moved to online sessions but look forward to getting back into the ‘classroom’.

Sogeti NL helps spread H’app’iness

NOMI is an app meant for connecting children suffering from the same disease, with each other and was originally designed for children fighting cancer. It all started, when two teenage kids, being treated for leukemia at the Princess Máxima Center for pediatric oncology in Utrecht, started ‘talking’ to each other by passing paper notes via nurses. What began with asking for advice and sharing thoughts, became a friendship that lasted for many years.

Based on their own personal experiences, the kids sensed a need and came up with the idea of a buddy app, which led to ‘Nomi’. Nomi is coined from ‘To Know Me’ and their Foundation is called Stichting Nomi, of which, the two girls are ‘board members’. Ward Latier, the driving force behind Nomi, was working for Kika (the foundation Kinderen kankervrij; translates to Children Cancer-free) and presented his idea of the app to Sogeti.

Sogeti NL built the app with the help of employee volunteers. In fact, Nomi's basic design was created by René Speelman, Manager Corporate Social Responsibility Sogeti NL and Program Manager Digital Inclusion Capgemini. Till March 2020, Sogeti even hosted the Foundation in their office in Amersfoort. Nomi is like WhatsApp, but more – it is an information channel for the kids battling similar diseases, illnesses and/or disabilities to connect with each other. Sogeti is building the software and the content is created by the kids and by a group of students from an IT-design university.