Digital Xtra Fund Encouraging Young People to Pursue Digital Tech Careers

Projects teaching digital skills to young people in Scotland may receive up to £5,000 worth of funding through the Digital Xtra Fund.

The Digital Xtra Fund aims to increase the number of young people entering highly-skilled digital careers; fostering the next generation of digital makers who will go on to help bridge the skills gap in Scotland’s digital economy. Funding will help to prepare young people for a digital future whilst encouraging them to consider the range of digital tech careers that they could pursue.

Project proposals should be able to demonstrate exciting, stimulating ways of engaging young people with digital skills such as computational thinking, coding, digital making and data science. Activities which are able to contextualise the skills learned, promoting various digital tech or computing science career pathways, are of particular interest. The Digital Xtra Fund is particularly keen to support projects which appeal to the following:

• Young people who have previously not been engaged in digital technologies.
• Girls and young women.
• Young people based in areas which are often excluded from digital technology related activities due to a lack of local facilities or geographical reasons. This could include areas of high deprivation and/or rural isolation.
• Young people from underrepresented groups. For example, those with a minority ethnic background or young people with disabilities.

Each project may apply for funding worth up to £5,000 from a total funding pot of £75,000.

The main applicant will be a registered company, school, college or university in Scotland involved in providing computing and digital technologies related activities. Partnerships are encouraged with other organisations such as industry, local or national government bodies, charities, schools and other extra curriculum activity providers.

The deadline for the current round of applications is 1 November 2018.

Find out more here.