This was just so amazing and very rewarding. On 16 and 17 October we held our second GET-IT networking conference in Cairo, Egypt. The conference was hosted by the Ministry of ICT in the ‘smart village’. We had representatives from 80 GET-IT centres, government organisations and educational institutions, as well as real entrepreneurs - our success stories - and they came from about 20 EMEA countries. We all joined hands during the conference and made the theme of the conference – Immersive Learning – a reality.

What did we do? The aim of the conference was to bring together delegates from our GET-IT centres, leaders from education and government and HP management, to exchange experiences, share best practices and get the latest updates on our GET-IT programme. This conference enabled participants to grow their own GET-IT network and learn from each other.

A real highlight for me was to see what GET-IT can achieve when we all come together and the impact that our GET-IT training clearly has on students and the local economy. Another highlight was hearing from entrepreneurs who spoke about how they were able to build their business or improve their economic situation as a result of their GET-IT training.

For instance, we heard from Aissatel Amet from France. She said that she had wanted to establish her own business as a web designer but she lacked sufficient knowledge in Excel programming and numbers. Her GET-IT training helped her to develop her knowledge and ability and she has now successfully launched her own business. These are moments that warm your heart.

The huge amount of work that went into organising this event was also a big highlight for me. It was clearly evident that the Micro Enterprise Acceleration Institute (MEA-I), the Suzanne Mubarak Peace Movement Foundation (one of our GET-IT partners in Egypt), United Nations Industrial Development Organisation (UNIDO) and of course HP really worked so hard and so well together. It was amazing. In addition to sharing experiences and best practice, we also provided our delegates and NGO partners with the latest developments of the GET-IT programme, specifically focusing on our online extension of the programme.

For example, in future the GET-IT centres will have the opportunity to get engaged in curriculum developments online and will be able to suggest topics of interest. Also, we have just launched our second serious game on the online GET-IT City platform. It is called GET-IT Blossom and it represents an extension of our existing online training platform GET-IT City.

GET-IT Blossom is an interactive training programme where the player is a manager of a flower business. The player has to make sure that his customers are happy, the turnover increases and the plantation and office-related work are run successfully.

It was so motivating and rewarding to see how the centres shared their experiences and engaged so well in ‘immersive learning’. To see how GET-IT helps students on a local level makes me feel very strong about our programme and I can’t wait to grow the scope and impact of this programme even further. We have made a lot of contacts within the centres and a number of governments are now really interested in growing GET-IT.

As you will remember from earlier blogs, GET-IT focuses a lot on online learning. This is why we made sure that the conference could also be accessed online to enable people who could not attend the conference in Cairo to participate from their own vantage point. They could do this, for instance, via our GET-IT Facebook page or our Twitter page and of course our GET-IT Homepage. You can find more information about the conference on all of those pages.

I would like to finish my blog entry by extending a big thank you to everyone who participated in the conference. Thank you for all of your contributions, your trust and your work. Let me also thank our partners, the Micro Enterprise Acceleration Institute for all their hard work in helping to organise the conference, as well as to the Ministry of ICT and the Suzanne Mubarak Women´s International Peace Movement for hosting us and for their support both before and during the event. Chapeau!

Daniela Opp, Manager Social Investment, EMEA

PS: you can find recent news about GET-IT on our homepage, our video or latest case study.