SIMPLonMARS, training jobs in digital technology, for the disadvantaged young people in Aix-Marseille

" We do not need any more to be an engineer to learn many skills such as the programming "

SIMPLon is a social enterprise established in 2013 from the meeting between a company manager and former students of CELSA having met a concept of training accelerated in the United States. Their report is common: there is in France on the one hand, an increasing need for developers, and on the other hand, a large number of job-seekers. Their bet is then to seize these "dropouts" and to make developers of the future.

Erwan KEZZAR, co-founder and director of SIMPLon, explains: "in the digital technology there are thousands of jobs and opportunities to take up the project, and, on the other hand, there isn’t a need of an engineer to learn many skills such as programming and the height of the other things, and in the faced with that there are job problems and insertion which we can know ".

SIMPLonMARS: the digital technology as the insertion vector

Knowledge, information and division are the training slogans. In fact, it is around the same domain, the digital technology, that people of different domains find themselves and can evolve together. The objective is to form quickly the practice of coding multi-languages, by putting the candidates in professional situation, or of trainers, in 8 intensive months. The selection bases on motivation but not necessarily the level of studies. SIMPLonMars is firstly interested in "the human being" by facing away from the traditional recruitment. Then it can become "SIMPLonien", the motivated people having capacities to become a professional of the digital technology, even if they are not engineers.

A universal  training of developers

By prioritizing profiles that we are not used to going alongside in the domain, as the non-graduates, the young people of priority districts, rural areas, SIMPLonMars also stands out by the accessibility. It also prioritizes the parity of men/women  by training developers.

The training addresses firstly the young people of less than 25 years but also the job-seekers, the beneficiaries of basic welfare benefits and seniors in retraining, as well as people in situation of handicap, finally all the populations were insufficiently represented in the technical jobs.

Supported in 2014 by "France makes a commitment ", SIMPLon does not stop slowing down its impact and social utility, without counting its credibility which allows a growing access to communities.

If the training had to be described in a sentence that would be:

" Make the digital technology a tool of cohesion and social integration "

SIMPLonMARS in some figures

•           More than 100 people having been trained
•           87 % of people having found a job in 3 months after the training
•           12 African countries gathered in the project " Africa codes week " to develop the apprenticeship of the coding in Africa
•           2000 simploniens trained in a distance via simplonline
•           32 companies and applications created
•           5 400 children trained by simplon.kids
•           12 schools in France

Justine Vacher