WHY AND HOW

In today's digital age, business transformation must take place over months, not years. Hence, it is critical that countries have not only a sufficient number of IT professionals but also an extensive pool of business-savvy workers who are ready for this transformation in their respective sectors. As the workforce is a vital part of the broader community, individual upgrading of skills at all levels also needs to take place simultaneously to provide the support for this change.

With this imperative in mind, the ICWFD was incorporated in California as a 501(c)3 Public charity organization and is challenged with recommending policies, strategies and solutions that enable the workforce of G77 Developing Countries (DC’s) and marginalized sectors of all countries to compete in the current and future global economy.

To establish the roadmap for our mandate, ICWFD conducted an IT literacy survey in 7 representative developing countries:

SURVEY FINDINGS:

Quality education is an experience that is not readily available in developing countries (DCs). The problems that persistently plague educational systems in the DCs include

1. a lack of “subject matter experts”,
2. deficient curricula,
3. unaffordability,
4. redundant teaching methods,
5. ineffective educational policies,
6. a lack of accurate monitoring of learning achievement and evaluation programs,
7. failure to identify correct educational needs,
8. little or no accountability,
9. little or no quality assurance,
10. inconsistency of curriculum, standards, metrics, and mechanisms, and
11. inability to authenticate teacher training or qualifications.

To cater to the demands of the new economy, thousands of institutes and learning centers are being established in a broad range of countries, offering skills training and degrees. Unfortunately, it was evident that "expert instructors" and the proper curriculum are not easily available. This situation is leading to functionally "illiterate" and "under-prepared" degree holders!

As it is not possible to send out thousands of expert instructors to each developing country, a viable alternative is the extension of IT and 21st  century employability skills to the masses to their communities through e-learning using the Internet. E-learning has proven to be the most cost-effective method of disseminating high-end “expert” level instruction. However, there were three key barriers to the adoption of e-learning in the DC: (i) very high cost of “expert content”, (while a lot of free e-learning content is available on the Internet, expert and certification level content with audio, video, and “instructional competency” built in, is very expensive); (ii) piracy (no first-rate content provider was willing to provide access to their courses for fear of them being copied); and (iii) bad end-user experience due to low Internet bandwidth and disconnection problems in the DCs (good content with audio and video just does not stream well over the Internet in the DCs).

To address these issues, ICWFD launched a global skills development initiative called “e-skills3600”, which is the only program of its kind in the world that addresses ALL the key barriers through high-end technology, and provides access to the highest quality certification level IT, Business, & Professional Development courses that ensure instructional competency and the proper curriculum.

By leveraging its global reach to billions of prospects in 133 DCs, ICWFD partnered with leading e-learning content and solutions providers to offer over 1,500 of the highest quality courseware to the underprivileged at negligible costs. The same courses that are available for hundreds of US Dollars in the West, are now available for FREE to the underprivileged masses via philanthropic and Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) programs as it allows individuals, companies and foundations an opportunity to fund and sponsor the skills and offer them FREE of cost to students.. The same courses that cost US$ 50 to US$ 150 commercially are available for sponsorship at nominal rates. The courses can be taken from anywhere in the world through a PIN-based branded scratch card system which lends itself very well to sponsorships by companies with CSR programs.  Using our system, companies can very easily show CSR in their local markets and bridge the digital divide at the same time.

Thanks to many individuals and socially responsible companies, ICWFD has brought free 21st. century employability skills to over 30 million people worldwide!