Whether it’s in our professional life, our hobbies, or dealing with administrative processes online, digital skills are constantly in demand. This is true for all parts of society, and for people of almost any age.
Digital skills have an undeniable intergenerational character. They are important for integration and performance in the labour market for young people. But they also provide a social link for older people.
ICDL France had the opportunity to certify the digital skills of tens of thousands of applicants last year. Among them were Charlélie Aguettand-Piemontais and Bernard Santens, respectively the youngest and oldest candidates in 2018.
The youngest candidate: Charlélie Aguettand-Piemonais
Charlélie is a student at MFR Le Villaret. Age 15, he has hobbies common to young people his age. But between going out with friends and his interest in drawing, he has a professional ambition to work in sport. He has had the idea since entering college. It echoes his love of sport and his passion for handball in particular.
Charlélie has very clear ideas on the subject. He already knows what her future job might look like: involving the organisation and preparation of targeted training and workshops.He has already completed several internships, where he was able to use his digital skills. Afterwards, he put his mastery of word processing to work in writing his reports.
At MFR Le Villaret, Charlélie had the opportunity to improve his digital skills and gain ICDL certification. When he received his certificate, he was the youngest successful candidate in France in 2018. His success is not only a result of his motivation and interest in using computers, but also a product of the teaching provided by MFR Le Villaret, which prepared him particularly well for his certification test.
In the near future, Charlélie plans to further improve the state of his office knowledge and to go even further by focusing on the development of websites.
The oldest candidate: Bernard Santens
Bernard Santens is not new to the digital world. Far from it! This 74-year-old retiree had a career in various sectors of activity working with technology. This included being in charge of the maintenance of electromechanical equipment.
If his professional career has led him to have good skills on essential office software, his curiosity has done the rest. From his first Amstrad, on which he made his budget with Money Manager, to Windows 10, through floppy disks, this computer enthusiast has followed both the small and large evolutions of computing.
His passion endures today. Bernard’s grandchildren are very happy to be able to count on their grandfather to help them when their computer does not work! But his helpful nature does not end there. For the past ten years, he has volunteering at the Espace de Vie Saint-Exupéry social centre in his municipality of Hem, leading computer science courses, especially for seniors. He is well aware of this audience’s needs, especially when it comes to carrying out administrative procedures online, such as for health or retirement insurance.
As the oldest ICDL candidate in France in 2018, Bernard also took advantage of training at the Ordinat’hem ICDL test centre. He appreciated the supervision and content of this training, as well as the ICDL certification tests that he took there. By his own admission, it was a learning experience that gave him ideas to reinforce the content and structure of his own training.
To both the oldest and youngest candidates, as well as the 27,700 other candidates in France who passed one or more ICDL certification tests in 2018, we extend our warmest congratulations!
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