UNESCO-Microsoft Partnership: ICT Training for Overseas Workers

UNESCO-Microsoft Partnership: ICT Training for Overseas Workers

Microsoft is providing training in the Philippines to both departing and arriving overseas Philippine workers. The program is in line with a memorandum of understanding signed in Paris by Microsoft chairman Bill Gates and Director General Koichiro Matsuura of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) to help increase access to ICT and ICT skills training in underserved communities.

The Philippines, like many developing nations, sends many of its citizens to work abroad. The process is hard on families, but the remittances of the overseas workers help families to survive economically. Access to the Internet is helping those international families to communicate, lessening the isolation of the overseas workers. And indeed, the opportunity to develop information technology enabled services may help the Philippines find a way to keep these folk home yet let them earn decent wages selling their services in international markets. The Microsoft-UNESCO training should help in both efforts.

Article by Ana Marie Pamintuan, NewsFlash.org/Star, SINGAPORE, November 19, 2004.