New government program seeks to provide free training and job placement in hi-tech

The Labor and Social Services Ministry has launched a program to provide free training and job placement in hi-tech.

The program, We Code, aims to recruit young men and women aged 25-30 from diverse populations, including Arab-Israelis, Ethiopians, people with disabilities, the ultra-Orthodox and from the social periphery, who are interested in integrating into the hi-tech field.

The initiative will offer participants intensive and quality training, close supervision, guidance and placement in their field of study. It will provide them with a full scholarship and a living stipend of NIS 2,000 per month beginning the second month of studies.

The program, in collaboration with JDC Israel Tevet and the Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya (IDC), will provide professional training in programming in a “Full Stack Web” track and offer introductory courses in computer science at the IDC spanning eight months.

Graduates of the program who will integrate into hi-tech for a year will be entitled to continue to pursue an undergraduate degree at the IDC.

The program does not require any prior knowledge or prerequisites for admission to computer-science studies, the ministry said.

It said the program is intended as an “alternative axis to academia” and seeks people with high abilities who are currently unemployed or employed at a salary that does not exceed NIS 7,000 for six months preceding the program.

“This is another step toward the optimal integration of diverse populations in quality employment,” Labor and Social Services Minister Haim Katz said on Sunday.

“In the last year, we have revolutionized professional training, including increasing budgets, updating syllabuses according to the needs of the economy and deepened collaborations with employers in an effort to ensure improved wages immediately at the end of studies,” he said. “The new program will provide a wide range of services, and I call on every young person who wishes to join the industry to register for it.”