Company to open 6 learning centres in Jordan, Lebanon
Technology firm says entrepreneurial training key to boosting employment in region
AUS technology company will open six learning studios to equip refugees in the Middle East with better employability skills. The company also plans to offer entrepreneurial training to the unemployed youth in the Gulf as part of a global educational and training programme, a senior executive told Gulf News yesterday.
“We will open three learning studios each in Jordan and Lebanon to help the displaced refugees,” Nate Hurst, Chief Sustainability and Social Impact Officer at HP, said in a telephone interview from Hamburg, Germany. He is attending the 2017 Global Citizen Festival in Hamburg, which is held on the eve of the G20 Summit.
The learning studios for the refugees will be established in cooperation with the governments of Jordan and Lebanon, and right partners in the non-governmental sector, Hurst said. The company has already collaborated with the Global Business Coalition for Education (GBC-Education) that works with the business community to offer quality education to children across the world, he said.
The initiative is part of HP’s pledge to spend more than $20 million (Dh73.4 million) to provide education and training for more than 100 million people across the globe between 2015-2025, which was announced in the Hamburg festival.
The executive said HP LIFE, an online business and IT training platform introduced by HP Foundation, already offers a large number of courses free of cost.
End of year target
About the timeframe to establish the six studios, Hurst said: “We have to work with the governments and other organisations such as the UN and Unicef to understand requirements [identify the needy people and security provisions for the project]. We have already sent a delegation to Jordan to figure out the partnership with right organisations [to implement the project].” He said the centres are expected to be opened by the end of this year.
Asked whether these programmes will support the unemployed youth in the Gulf and other parts of the region, he said: “We will definitely target them.”