Students of the West Brabant educational institutions Avans, BUas and Curio are going to support entrepreneurs in their digital development. In the so-called Digiwerkplaats SME, a hackathon will take place this Friday, in which twenty Avans students will work in groups to develop a sustainability dashboard for three companies.
In the workshop, companies get free access to advice and implementation in the areas of online marketing, sales, data analysis, ict, and automation. This should make them more resilient and future-proof, is the idea. The entrepreneurs for whom the students will work during this hackathon are Freightned from Oosterhout and Match and Work and Elemental Eco Shop from Breda.
In addition to the benefits for entrepreneurs, the day provides opportunities for students to gain relevant practical experience and connect with potential employers. This helps retain talent for the regional labor market, which the educational institutions say is crucial in sectors with a shortage of qualified personnel.
There are more than 17,500 businesses in West Brabant. According to the cooperating schools, many businesses are struggling with digitalization, something that would have become especially evident during the corona pandemic.
Avans is a university of applied sciences with branches in Breda, Den Bosch, Roosendaal and Tilburg and has about 33,000 students. BUas (Breda University of Applied Sciences) is a specialized university of applied sciences in Breda with about seven thousand students. Curio is an MBO and VMBO institution with nearly forty locations in West Brabant and about twenty thousand students.
