Microsoft congratulates the following Unlimited Potential (UP) grant recipients. We are proud to support their work.
Bahrain
Career Connections
Unemployment is growing and represents a major challenge to Bahrain's growth and development. The Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs (Molsa) statistics show that there are currently 22,000 unemployed Bahrainis; 800 of them are university graduates who are unable to find jobs because of the low demand for their specific specialties or their lack of experience as they compete in a job market that includes a large number of expatriates.
Career Connections is considered a key project to assist Bahrainis and the Bahraini community to address this challenge and provide better job opportunities.
The objective of Career Connections is to offer unemployed Bahraini university graduates various IT skills development programs to enable them to secure new jobs.
Molsa will partner with BIS to provide additional training on soft skills, résumé writing, and interviewing to help prepare people for the work force. Additionally, Molsa will make available to the trainees a jobs and vacancies database, a résumé repository, and a matching service. Graduates will be able to post their CVs online and search for job opportunities in which they can apply their new skills and take part in the competitive market.
The Microsoft UP grant will cover all the IT skills development programs as well as a train-the-trainer program.
Cyprus
Cyprus mobile units
There is high demand for IT literacy in the less privileged regions and rural areas of Cyprus. A mobile unit has been identified as an ideal way to help address this demand.
The goal is to set up a mobile, multifunction unit that will provide training programs to rural areas. This will help improve the employment prospects for young people in low-paying jobs. This unit will also be used to provide young people with access to the Web and to Internet-based information on drug abuse, contraceptives, health and relationship issues, and other subjects of interest. The mobile unit will be used in exhibitions, concerts, and other events that young people frequent. Through the existing community centers, a network of six centers will be established to help realize the IT skills development plan of the country and provide access for the disadvantaged youth in remote, rural areas and cities.
The Microsoft UP grant will be used to set up the mobile unit, train the trainers, train youth, and link the centers to each other and the mobile unit.
Egypt
MCIT Clubs
The technology clubs empowerment project will help create opportunities and access points for the underserved communities in Egypt.
As part of the Egyptian Ministry of Communication and Information Technology (MCIT) vision to bring Egypt into the information technology (IT) age, it launched the Technology Clubs initiative. This initiative is working to provide IT access to Egyptian citizens and communities and to leverage IT to improve standards of living and the socioeconomic conditions in Egypt. The technology clubs are hosted and managed by a variety of organizations, mainly nongovernmental organizations (NGOs).
The project aims to enhance the IT skills of 200 IT clubs trainers for 100 IT clubs across the country and to empower more than 16,000 underserved community members annually. The project will ensure that the IT clubs have state-of the art technologies and, more importantly, qualified trainers and a sustainable business model. The project will be implemented in collaboration with RITSEC, UNDP-ICTDAR, and the MCIT.
SME Development
As part of long-term investment in one of the showcase countries, a number of long-term programs will be implemented in Egypt.
The SME project has been designed in collaboration with a number of key stakeholders, RITSEC, NGO, IGO, and government. Its focus is creating new job opportunities and providing the graduates of universities and technical schools with the skills required to start new businesses, a cornerstone of economic development. The project seeks to empower youth to start their own businesses (SMEs) through the use of ICTs to enhance their productivity, increase market share, and open up new markets locally and internationally. The program targets an important sector in the Egyptian economy and has contributed significantly to the skills development of the interns, allowing them to contribute more effectively to their work environment, whether privately owned or through employment with SMEs. The program also addresses a key issue in socioeconomic development: the employment and inclusion of all for the creation of a better, more efficient work force.
The pilot phase of the project has successfully been implemented. In this phase, 200 university graduates (50 percent men, 50 percent women) completed training and are ready to apply for grants or revolving loans to start businesses.
RITSEC, Microsoft in collaboration with a number of NGOs, and the government have successfully completed phase one. More than 150 young unemployed university graduates successfully completed the first pilot, and 60 percent of them started small businesses. The objective of this phase is to provide training and skills development for approximately 500 youth from five Governorates, empowering them with both basic and advanced ICT programs, business and management skills, and knowledge that enables them to enhance their performance. This training and development opens up new opportunities and contributes to the growth and development of the SMEs. The project will also contribute to increasing the SME productivity and market share, leading to overall community development, a step toward building a new society capable of competing globally.
Ethiopia, Rwanda
We Are the Future (WAF)
The WAF programs aim to achieve peace-building and to develop communication channels between conflict/post-conflict cities. The programs use information technology to create bridges between children and youth in six cities, starting with Addis Ababa and Kigali. Through the project, We Are the Future CTLC will be established as a center where ICT can be used to develop a network of youth across the world, to open up new roads of thought to assist in developing their potential. The target group for this project is youth (ages 16 to 24), who will be trained as trainers and champions to in turn train younger children (ages 4 to 15). The program will create skills among the local youth that correspond to the needs of the society, allowing them to overcome marginalization and empowering them to play a role globally. WAF aims to empower children and youth through IT skills development to broaden their horizons and open new avenues for a better future.
Through the Microsoft UP grant, 500 youth and children will be trained in basic IT skills. Each center will have a dedicated coordinator and 15 youth trainers. A local business plan for each center will be developed to ensure the sustainability and growth of the center activities. The WAF center will act as a hub and a model in each center, networking other community centers and providing support and best practices. The project will link all the WAF centers in the six cities: Kigali, Addis Ababa, Asmara, Nebulas, Kabul, and Free Town.
Israel
House of Windows
People with disabilities and elderly people (about 600,000) make up 13 percent of the population in Israel. Using technology could help them tremendously in improving their quality of life and their day-to-day activities. Limited work has been done to help this community, and even less has been done to provide accessible technology.
The goal of this project is to create accessible community centers for people with disabilities, using existing community centers with computer labs (Israel Association of Community Centers). In these community centers, groups with various disabilities will be provided with free accessible technology (for example, software, assistive technology), courses, workshops, training, and support. To empower the special needs community, the centers will be open to the public to create a relationship and integration between this community and the community at large.
The Microsoft UP grant is being used for software and special assistive technology, as well as to build capacity of the guides and volunteers through training and to provide free courses for people with disabilities. It is in our belief that accessible technology will change the lives of the special needs community, and it is our hope that this project will demonstrate the importance of accessible technology within this community.
Jordan
e-Village
There are huge disparities between men and women in the rural areas of this region. The project aims to transform a Jordanian village into a gender-sensitive, vibrant community where information and communications technology is deployed to improve the quality of life. Through this project, UNIFEM and local communities will raise villagers' awareness of the different initiatives taking place in the village and will build the capacity and professional skills of the villagers. This will enhance the economic opportunities in the village by creating new job opportunities and helping villagers unleash their potential.
Through the Unlimited Potential grant, we will implement a women's empowerment program using ICT skills development. The program includes providing train-the-trainers courses, providing the curricula, upgrading the lab equipment, and providing software for all the e-Village projects. The program will be designed to address the needs of women and train them on deploying IT as one of the main tools for the socioeconomic development of the community. It is an aggressive program that aims to reach all women in two villages. One of the CTLCs will also be hosting an IT academy to extend its services to the teachers and students at the nine surrounding schools.
Kenya
Computer Literacy for Women in Kenya
The overall objective of this program is to provide urban women in Kenya with the opportunity for income-generating activities through increased computer literacy. This includes teaching them economic basics to enable them build their own microenterprises, thus breaking the poverty cycle.
The computer literacy training activities at Fanusi Training center are running well. However, despite demand for training, it has not been possible to reach the very poor because the fees for the course, although modest, make it challenging for them to participate. This project seeks to increase the scale of computer training facilities and to position the center to offer free training for women and young girls. This will increase the amount of computer literacy training to poor women in all strata of Kenyan society and will facilitate moving the country closer to digital inclusion.
The UP grant will provide for training the trainers and Internet connectivity for the program.
Kuwait
National Career Development Center
Unemployed Kuwaitis represent a large 9 percent of the local population in Kuwait. They are graduates with few or no IT skills and are in need of professional development that will better position them in today's highly competitive job market. The National Career Development Center project in Kuwait addresses this issue by providing job seekers with the fundamentals of technology learning and skills at no charge. Building on the success of the first phase, in which 250 unemployed youth were trained through 20 programs in basic IT skills development, the second phase of the project aims to address the needs of 300 Kuwaitis who currently have no access to information technology and do not have PCs at home. These Kuwaitis are now learning software tools and computer skills, as well as basic professional skills that are required to secure jobs. The program seeks to set a precedence, showing job seekers that IT skills are a basic need in preparing for the work force.
Lebanon
KAFA, Lebanon
A CD-ROM was recently produced with funding from the EU, administered through the UNDP/ICTDAR program. The CD-ROM contains exhaustive material on all family law, as practiced by all 19 religious sects in Lebanon, and is fully searchable by topic or keyword. The next stage focuses on distributing the CD-ROM to approximately 30 social centers in different parts of Lebanon, rural areas in particular, and distributing computers and printers to a large number of these centers. Moreover, as part of this stage, social workers and some users in these centers will receive IT training so they can effectively use the CD-ROM.
Providing information on rights and families using new tools, the CD-ROM, and the Internet is considered a breakthrough, especially for underserved areas and villages. The challenge is accessing the information and providing skills to do so. An integral part of the project is having qualified trainers to train women on accessing the information.
The project aims to support the rights of women and children by helping social workers provide legal documentation counsel to women and children facing specific problems in their families or communities. The Microsoft UP grant will support the empowerment of women through IT skills development. Training will be provided for 40 trainers, 30 at the social center. Through this project, the trainers and women will work together as hands-on training to create a Web site for the CD-ROM. This Web site will make the information available online, and the women will be active contributors of knowledge as they participate in updating the content. The program will enable women from rural areas to access information and learn more about their rights. More importantly, it will provide them with the skills for better job opportunities.
The key partners KAFA, UNDP-ICT, and Microsoft will be collaborating to achieve this goal, empowering women in rural areas and updating the information online. The women will increase their understanding of their rights under the law and will be empowered to actively share this knowledge with others.
Lebanese Physical Handicapped Union
In an effort to create a more inclusive society, the Lebanese Physical Handicapped Union is collaborating with Microsoft to design this project. The project seeks to increase the number of employed community members with disabilities in the midwest Bekaa, to address the prejudice toward the working capacities and skills of people with disabilities, and to activate the role of local governments and the National Employment Office. The project will provide training for more than 250 people with disabilities (60 percent are women) in the Bekaa and will work to empower 1,500 community members, families, and friends of people with disabilities.
The success of the project will be measured based on the following:
- Number of people with disabilities and community members who receive IT training
- New jobs created and job opportunities for the community of people with disabilities
- Market-oriented vocational and technical training programs outlined and adapted to the needs of attendees with disabilities
- Certain modifications for specific jobs to overcome the disability outlined
Morocco
Ajialcom
The project Ajialcom seeks to empower youth through access to knowledge and IT skills. The project is a partnership between Microsoft, UNDP Morocco, UNDP ICTDAR, and the youth Secretary of State. The first phase of the project was successfully implemented in 2004 and 2005 through the establishment of 10 CTLCs at the youth centers. The centers provide IT access and IT training to underserved community members and youth. More than 1,000 Moroccan youth received training during the first six months of operation. The project partners have decided to continue the mission of providing access to Moroccan youth all across the country and expanding the project to establish 50 new CTLCs.
In phase two of the project, Morocco will be working toward a more digitally inclusive country, where access to knowledge and IT skills will be provided to youth all across the country. Phase two of the project will provide young people with access to IT tools, information through the Internet, and IT training, enabling them to participate in the knowledge economy to bridge the digital divide. The IT skills development program will provide youth with skills they need to get better jobs and will help prepare them for the work force, thereby supporting local and national socioeconomic development.
Cyberbase
The digital divide is a key challenge facing Morocco today. Disparities in access to information technology and knowledge have led to a widening of the divide. The project Cyberbase plans to provide avenues and access points for Moroccan youth by establishing 15 Cyberbase centers all across the country in the first year. Through these CTLCs, youth will receive training in basic IT skills development and will be prepared to meet the challenges and requirements of the work force. The program aspires to set up 400 centers in three years; each center will have dedicated trainers and support teams. During the first year, 60 trainers will be trained, 2 in each center. These trainers will train 3,000 others in basic IT, management, and language skills. The centers will also provide access to the Internet and knowledge for more than 30,000 Moroccans.
Within the next three years, Cyberbase will assist in reducing the digital divide by teaching citizens to use IT to improve job opportunities in the local market. The program is open to the public and will be located in underprivileged areas where there are young people between the ages of 10 and 25 and retired people over 55. By teaching people to use PCs and the Internet efficiently, Cyberbase will help bridge the digital divide in underserved and poor areas.
Pakistan
Adventure Web for Youth
In partnership with MKR Foundation (MKRF) and the National Commission for Human Development (NCHD), Microsoft has launched the Adventure Web for Youth Program (AWFP). NCHD sees human development as a process of enlarging choices, building capacities, and encouraging grass-roots community participation. MKRF is a social enterprise that seeks to empower underserved communities through the provision of IT skills training and capacity-building programs.
This AWFP aims to train the future generation on IT tools for lifelong learning, and to prepare young people for the work force by providing them with IT training and skills development programs as well as management tools. Through AWFP, we aim to build the IT and management skills of more than 500 young people under the age of 20. Students and young people will implement what they learn and will participate in online projects and programs that will allow them to build content in local languages in areas such as science, math, health, sports, social and biological science, and environment.
The Microsoft UP grant will be used to support the empowerment process, providing for train-the-trainer courses, salaries of youth trainers, and per diem expenses for master trainers.
Saudi Arabia
This is a three-year plan to equip Saudi youth for the work force and to empower them with IT skills so that they can play a role globally. The project aims to empower 2 million Saudis with IT and business skills. The project will work to narrow the IT gap, minimize the digital divide, improve youth productivity, and provide better job opportunities for university and technical school students.
The plan is to reach to all segments of society, with a focus on youth, unemployed, and women. Saudi Arabia has a very young population, with 60 percent under the age of 20, so it is essential to address this age group. The project will be a joint effort with key partners, King Faisal Foundation, the General Organization for Technical Education and Vocational Training (GOTEVOT), MOE, and local private sectors.
South Africa
Digital Villages Development
This project will address the need to build capacity and skills at 45 already established digital villages. The program will provide technical skills training to underserved individuals and will partner with these communities to create social and economic opportunities that can change lives and transform communities.
This project aims to address the need to build the capacity and skills of Microsoft SA's digital village managers in the 45 existing centers, per the recommendations of the evaluation report in 2004. The project will introduce accredited training curriculum to at least 20 digital village managers, who will in turn train at least 5 trainers per digital village.
The Microsoft UP grant will be used for advance training of digital village managers.
Digital Villages, Community Development
This project addresses the need to build the capacity and skills of women's groups, unemployed youth, community leaders, and the community at large. This will be achieved through literacy training of approximately 300 women each year and will further facilitate the coordination of local women's groups to run small, entrepreneurial businesses. Unemployed youth will be trained in lifelong learning skills and be provided with career enhancement programs. Teachers and government officials will be trained to provide better services to the community.
The Microsoft UP grant will be used for capacity-building programs for rural areas, train-the-trainer programs, and support for program development.
Tanzania
Mkombozi Centre for Street Children
There is a pressing need for employment opportunities for youth who have completed secondary schooling. Although information technology skills are necessary to secure employment, these skills are not taught in schools. This has significant implications for national development and youth unemployment in Tanzania.
Enhancing education, training, and employment opportunities for young people, out-of-school youth, and street children is a development priority in Africa, where half the population is under 16 years old. The aim of this project is to establish 13 CTLCs in Kilimanjaro Region, with an average of 15 computers per institution. Through this project, Mkombozi Centre for Street Children will train street youth as hardware technicians and IT trainers and will provide basic IT skills training for more than 6,500 children.
The UP grant will be used for capacity building, train-the-trainer programs, and IT skills training for street children and out-of-school youth.
Tunisia
Sub Regional Technology Center for Youth Empowerment
UNESCO, Microsoft, and the National Youth Observatory are partnering to establish a regional center of excellence, Info Youth Center. The center is designed to empower youth to play a role globally through the use of IT. The center will provide IT skills development programs, create a network of youth, and encourage youth to collaborate and actively participate in the growing knowledge-based society. Hosted in Tunisia by the Youth Observatory, the center is designed to serve the youth of Mauritania, Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, and Egypt.
The center's objectives are to:
- Develop ICT skills-training schemes targeted at the needs of youth.
- Promote the efficient use of information and communication technology resources in the subregion through the pooling of know-how, identification of common resource needs, and facilitation collective responses.
- Empower young people to realize their potential through improving their technical skills and helping integrate a new style of learning, thus preparing them for the requirements of the labor market.
- Engage youth to participate in the development of knowledge portals in different fields through collaborative learning programs.
The project will draw on resources and best practices from UNESCO's international information and data exchange network INFOYOUTH and on the Microsoft UP initiative. The center has set ambitious goals for the first year, including:
- Training trainers for Info Youth Center.
- Training 260 trainers to serve 130 youth and community-based centers in Tunisia. These trainers will train more than 8,000 underserved youth during the first year.
- Implementing collaborative projects for youth in Egypt, Tunisia, and Morocco.
Turkey
Employment for the Disabled
There are 9 million people with disabilities in Turkey, and 12 percent of the population is isolated in society. According to employment regulations, 2 to 4 percent of an enterprise's employees must be people with disabilities. However, people with disabilities often do not have the necessary skills for the work force, so there are about 50,000 job openings in government and nongovernmental organizations for people with disabilities.
The purpose of this project is to set up six technology centers in six cities. These centers will be designed for people with disabilities and will provide training in IT skills, including Internet use and Web development. The project also plans to provide training in basic application development for a smaller group of participants. This will equip participants with the necessary skills to find employment in governments, NGOs, and private companies.
The Unlimited Potential grant will be used for project management to set up centers, train the trainers, select applicants, and train 600 people with disabilities and prepare them for the work force through IT skills, internships, and job placements.
United Arab Emirates (UAE)
Empowering Disabled Children and Families
The Sharjah City for Humanitarian Services is one of the associations under the family supreme council, with the mission of providing training, education, and job opportunities for everyone, especially people with disabilities of all ages and nationalities in Sharjah, UAE.
The objective of the project is to assist challenged people to exercise their right to proper education, training, and rehabilitation, regardless of the degree of their disability and within the permissible boundaries. The project also seeks to provide families with guidance and counseling so that they can provide an appropriate environment for their children with disabilities.
As part of the mission, training and skills development is required for the disabled community to prepare them for the work force and to increase their chances of finding jobs. This will be done through empowering them with IT skills that will prepare them for the work force. The organization has four branches in Sharjah City, where the project will assist in establishing five CTLCs in the five locations. This will increase access to IT skills for people with disabilities and for community members. The program aims at providing IT skills development to trainers and community members.
Yemen
Women and Children Empowerment
Soul is the brainchild of a dedicated group of Yemeni professionals who recognized the need to assist women and children in Yemen in the fields of health, education, and social development. The organization works to provide a better quality of life for Yemeni women and children by empowering women to play an active role in civil society institutions and in the decision-making process.
The project aims at empowering both women and youth (who represent more than 50 percent of the society) with IT skills and at preparing them for the work force. The project will also assist in establishing a network of community centers that will provide better communications, engagement, and sharing of knowledge to raise women's cultural, political, and social level. The initial goal is to train 50 university women in basic ICT and Internet skills.
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