Sparkle, the first international service provider in Italy and among the top global operators, renews and reinforces its adhesion to YEP - Young Women Empowerment Program, an initiative promoted by the Fondazione Ortygia to support the personal and professional growth of female university students in Southern Italy. As part of the project, Sparkle will accompany the development of young women as main partner in Sicily, which has always been a strategic region for the operator.
Born from an idea of Lucrezia Reichlin, President and co-founder of Fondazione Ortygia, the Young Women Empowerment Program intends to offer new generations useful tools to guide their academic and career choices, develop merit and promote ambition and confidence in the future.
In this context, fifteen Sicilian students enrolled in master’s degree courses in economic and scientific disciplines at the University of Palermo, the University of Catania and the University of Messina will be supported by as many managers in an individual mentoring path. In this edition, for the first time, the program involves the participation of mentors from Sparkle’s overseas offices, offering an international experience and the opportunity to develop language and intercultural skills that nowadays play a crucial professional role.
Thanks to the exchange and discussion with the mentors, the students, in addition to gaining understanding of their potential to propose themselves in the world of work with greater awareness, will have the opportunity to get in touch with a high-tech working reality with an international vocation and solid roots in the territory and participate in the recruiting campaigns in Sicily promoted by Sparkle.
It is in fact in Sicily that Sparkle has developed, through the two poles of Palermo and Catania, the main internet hub in the Mediterranean, the heart of technological innovation and a gateway for traffic from and to Europe for Africa, the Middle East and Asia. The regional capital hosts the Sicily Hub, a latest generation neutral data center, while the Sicily Lab, a hyper-convergent data center and technological innovation laboratory, is located in Catania.
"We renew our collaboration with Fondazione Ortygia with conviction and are happy to expand it by including our international managers in the mentoring project", said Elisabetta Romano, CEO of Sparkle. "We believe that in our Country, which has the highest percentage of female graduates in economic and scientific subjects at European level but one of the lowest presences in the effective workforce, it is essential to engage in projects such as YEP that favor the meeting and exchange between young women and companies, for mutual benefit".
Joining the YEP project confirms the commitment of Sparkle and of TIM Group to the development of female presence and to the reduction of gender disparity.
About Sparkle
Sparkle is TIM Group’s fully owned Global Operator, first international service provider in Italy and among the top ten worldwide, with a proprietary backbone of more than 600,000 km of fiber spanning from Europe to Africa, the Americas and Asia. Leveraging its global IP, Data, Cloud, Data Center, Mobile Data and Voice Platforms, Sparkle offers a full range of ICT solutions to Internet Service Providers, OTTs, Media and Content Players, Application Service Providers, Fixed and Mobile operators as well as Multinational Enterprises. Its sales force is active worldwide and distributed over 34 countries.
Find out more about Sparkle following its Twitter and Linkedin profiles or visiting the website tisparkle.com
About Fondazione Ortygia
Fondazione Ortygia is a platform that aims to promote innovation and development in Southern Italy and the Mediterranean area through business support and the enhancement of human capital, with two main actions: the attraction of Mediterranean talents to stop the flow of 'brains' that increasingly leave the South to train and do business in Northern Italy and Northern Europe, and the attraction of local and international companies and professionals to operate as catalysts of resources and new skills in the area.
Founded in 2016 from the vision of economist Lucrezia Reichlin to create a hub for the training and development of a new Human Capital in the area, it specialises in managerial training programmes for large companies of national and international relevance, programmes for the growth and development of SMEs in Southern Italy, and programmes to inspire, orientate and bring young people closer to the world of work.
Rome, 10 October 2022
