Pitch regarding Simplon’s activities—its creation, its targets, the projects, and the training provided.
Created in Montreuil, in the eastern suburbs of Paris, in April 2013, Simplon.co is a social business, approved and certified by the La France s'engage foundation and the Grande Ecole du Numérique French tech labels. These organizations offer free, in-person training, providing certificates in the fastest growing technical digital jobs. Priority is given to young people with little to no higher education, the long-term unemployed, active solidarity income (RSA) welfare beneficiaries, people with disabilities, refugees, and people with protected status, as well as women who are underrepresented in technical digital roles.
Over five years, Simplon has trained more than 2,500 people—38% of whom are women and 60% of whom have no college education. It now trains 1,000 people a year through its network of 30 schools operated by the company or through partnerships, in France’s poor neighborhoods, rural areas, overseas territories, and abroad (Europe, Middle East and Africa). Within the six months following the end of training, 80% of participants find a job placement, take on an entrepreneurial project, or continue with further education.
Simplon in key figures
1,000
people trained per year
2,500
people trained for 5 years
38%
of women
60%
of whom have no college education
Simplon provides training for technical digital roles and skills—computer programming, web or mobile development, AI, DevOps, cybersecurity, webmastering, e-commerce, agility, product management, etc.
Simplon.co also works to make training in computer programming accessible to everyone, including the general public and children, by coordinating initiatives such as Europe Code Week and, in 2015, Africa Code Week across 18 African countries. Through these, more than 150,000 children have received an introduction to programming since 2013.
Finally, pursuing this same goal of creating jobs and demonstrating the inclusive side of the digital domain, Simplon.co operates two complementary activities to help its program alumni enter the labor market. On one hand, Simplon Prod creates websites and mobile apps, and on the other Simplon Corp supports employees in the context of an inclusive digital transformation.
Number of countries where you operate
Europe : France, Belgium, Italy, Spain, Romania
Middle East : Lebanon, Jordan
Africa : Senegal, Ivory Coast, Tunisia, Morocco.
Explain how the objective pertains to the social and solidarity economy?
The ESUS legal framework (solidarity incorporation, participatory governance, salary guidelines, etc.); the hybrid economic model; targets are estranged from the labor market; target regions are “high-priority”; the job of supporting the digital transformation and digital tools of players in the social and solidarity economy (Simplon Prod/Corp): everything is social and solidarity-based
Photos SIMPLON ©Frédéric Bieth