More than half of the participants in the Radia Programme improved their employability once they had completed their training

The programme is promoted by the ONCE Foundation, the CEOE Foundation and the Conference of Social Councils of Spanish Universities, and is supported by Minsait, an Indra company. The initiative, now in its third edition, seeks to promote the presence of women with disabilities in STEM jobs.

More than half of the women with disabilities who have participated in the first two editions of the Radia Programme have managed to secure better employment once the training period is over. This was highlighted at the ceremony to award the diplomas of the second edition and the presentation of the third, which took place this Wednesday at the headquarters of ‘Por Talento Digital’ within the ONCE Foundation.

The programme, which has already been attended by almost a hundred women with disabilities, is promoted by the ONCE Foundation, the CEOE Foundation and the Conference of Social Councils of Spanish Universities. It is also supported by Minsait, an Indra company. 

Isabel Martínez Lozano, Director of Programmes with Universities and Promotion of Young Talent at the ONCE Foundation, was in charge of opening the event, which was attended by Patricia Sanz, Vice-President for Equality, Human Resources and Institutional Culture, and Digital Inclusion of the ONCE General Council; José Luis Martínez Donoso, Director General of the ONCE Foundation; Antonio Abril, President of the Conference of Social Councils of Spanish Universities; Ángel Sánchez, General Coordinator of the CEOE Foundation, and Margarita Fernández, Head of Social Action at Minsait. 

In her address, Martínez Lozano pointed out that, in addition to improving the digital skills of the students, the programme aims to help women with disabilities to occupy leadership positions, because there is a lot of talent among them and this talent is not always well targeted.  

Meanwhile, Antonio Abril praised the participants, who “have decided to step out of their comfort zone” and begin training in something unrelated to their previous areas of expertise.

In this regard, he added that knowledge is very important, but that the world in which we live also greatly appreciates the so-called “soft skills”, “which include wonderful things such as entrepreneurship, leadership skills, resilience and ethical commitment, among others”.

Ángel Sánchez also spoke about talent and competencies. He believes that “we must take action, as Radia is doing”, and we must do so “with two words in mind: excellence and humanism”. In his opinion, the main asset a company has is talent in all its diversity, which is why he believes that “we can only achieve excellence as a society if we pursue talent”.

“For the CEOE Foundation,” he concluded, “this is a cutting-edge project in which everything we do is channelled. It is a project dedicated to talent and life and the CEOE Foundation is very proud to be a part of it”.

Finally, in closing the event, Patricia Sanz said that Radia “is a magnificent example of what we try to do every day at the ONCE Social Group, namely, to work as a network and join allies to generate employment for people with disabilities”.

From this perspective, she encouraged the business sector to join the Radia Programme, because, she said, having a person with a disability on the payroll is not only generating employment, but also giving a vital opportunity to a person with a disability who, like any other person, has a life plan. “Our challenge,” she concluded, “is to detect talented people with disabilities and help them join the labour market”.

Marietta de Miguel, a student of the second edition, and Laura Colás, one of the students who started the course in this third edition, spoke on behalf of the participants. 

The programme is aimed at women with university degrees from all over Spain, of all ages and from different educational fields and professional careers. It is designed for students such as Ana Marín, who holds a Law degree and says that her experience at Radia has allowed her to “make a 180-degree turnaround in her career”, training in skills she “thought were exclusive to engineers or experts in the sector” before taking part in the programme.

It is also designed for students like Carlota Ponce, an aerospace engineer, who says that the programme has given her “technological tools and ideas to work in her sector and make it safer, more efficient and more reliable”.

As in the two previous editions, learning will be divided into three phases that combine classroom and virtual training on the most pressing digital transformation issues, such as artificial intelligence, fintech, e-sport, e-commerce, cybersecurity, biotechnology, blockchain and green tech. It will also include tutorials and inspirational content with mentors from different companies and internships in technology companies. 

The first of the three training phases is called ‘Brain Storm’, and its aim is for the students to acquire, over the course of its 13-week duration, knowledge and technological skills to work in jobs in the digital economy. 

Once this period is over, the ‘Mentor Women’ phase will begin, which lasts 12 weeks and aims to guide the participants so that they can decide which professional certification they will pursue in this phase. It will include mentoring sessions to help them grow in digital learning. 

Finally, they will enter the ‘Real Work’ phase, a 13-week-long segment in which the students will be able to undertake paid internships in a real environment, applying the knowledge they have acquired to increase their experience and learning.

RADIA Programme 

The RADIA WOMEN’S DIGITAL INCLUSION Programme takes its name from Radia Perlman, the creator of one of the world’s most widely used communication protocols that makes networks stable, robust, and secure.

Currently, only one out of every six ICT specialists in the labour market are women. This is compounded by the fact that disability makes it difficult for women to be included in higher education and employment. For this reason, the purpose of the program is to offer training and jobs that include more women with disabilities in the digital sector, recognizing both the value of their contributions and their talent, which is essential for building an inclusive, competitive, and dynamic digital society.

From this standpoint, RADIA establishes a series of steps aimed at increasing the number of female university students with disabilities employed in jobs based on the use of digital technology.