GET IT – our first T-Tools Guidance Course in Zurich - CSR in Europe, Middle East and Africa -
CSR in Europe, Middle East and Africa » GET IT – our first T-Tools Guidance Course in Zurich
GET IT – our first T-Tools Guidance Course in Zurich
A few weeks ago, I hosted the first GET-IT T-Tools Guidance Course in Zurich, Switzerland, together with our partner in this initiative, MEA-I.

GET-IT (Graduate Entrepreneurship Training through IT) is part of our Microenterprise Development Programme in Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA). We launched this philanthropic initiative on May 3rd. The programme provides unemployed students and graduates between the ages of 16 and 25 with access to a combined IT and business skills training to enhance their chances of employability. We deliver this programme in partnership with the Micro-Enterprise Acceleration Institute (MEA-I) – a non-profit organisation focusing on entrepreneurship training – and with several non-profit organisations that provide the training on a local level.

The core element of this GET-IT initiative is an innovative training course named Technology Tools (T-Tools) that bridges the divide between pure business skills courses and technical skills courses. Its purpose is to help young people understand the common business challenges and to learn how to implement technology to solve the challenges in the areas of management and operations, finances, communication, and marketing.

The selected NGOs will receive HP ICT, an Education Solution, the T-Tools Guidance course and the T-Tools training materials. Since the programme is currently offered in 18 countries across EMEA we made sure that all material is available in local language.
In Zurich, trainers and coaches from the selected HP grantee organisations were trained by MEA-I’s Master trainers in a guidance course.

Having taken this training of trainers course, the participants are now able to teach T-Tools to young under- or unemployed youth in their home country. During the training I had the chance to talk to the trainers and it was exciting to see how passionate they were about the programme. They gave valuable feedback to our approach and I am already looking forward to hear from them how their first training sessions with the students and graduates went.

In total, 15 NGO representatives from over ten different countries attended the first training session in Zurich and I could tell that they enjoyed the T-Tools guidance course. It was an intense week with a lot of interactive hands-on activities. In this course we also started our ‘network of partners’, which will be grown into a best practise sharing/networking platform, for both the NGOs and the recipients of the training. The next two courses will take place in St-Petersburg in Russia in June and Johannesburg in Africa in July.

During the week-long training I had the opportunity to meet many of our NGO partners in person and we had time to get to know each other and talk about the specific local needs. I realized how valuable GET-IT is and I was happy to see that the trainers are as motivated as I am to get the programme started.

I personally feel that with this programme we can have an impact on one of the most pressing social issues in Europe. Unemployment in Europe is most acute for the age group that represents the future. From our research we learned that in the twenty-seven countries of the European Union, approx.18 percent of young people below the age of 25 couldn’t find a job last year. This is a scary, high number and I hope that GET-IT can contribute to lower this number in the following years. We plan to train 6,000 young people in the first year. Given the high numbers of youth unemployment, it is a drop in the ocean but it’s an important start and a contribution that we can make as an IT company.

Do you know if there are any other companies out there addressing youth unemployment through ICT – so far, I believe HP is the only company active in this field?

Daniela Opp
Manager, Social Investments and Economic Development, HP EMEA.
Posted 06-20-2007 3:37 PM by BlogArchive
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