Globe to help mold Cebu's service development sector

CEBU, Philippines - Globe Telecoms announced its active stance to develop Cebu’s service development industry by partnering with the University of San Jose-Recoletos (USJ-R), through the company’s “GlobeLoves for School” (GlobeLoves) program.

Globe corporate social responsibility (CSR) head Jeffrey Tarayao said that GlobeLoves, which is under the Globe Bridging Communities (Globe BridgeCom) program, will develop a pool of skills that will develop commercial services for mobile and web technology starting with the selected IT students in USJ-R.

Ultimately, this program will be rolled out to different universities and colleges nationwide, but the company will pilot this program in Cebu.

After USJ-R, Tarayao said Globe will be talking with other universities like University of Cebu, University of the Philippines Cebu College, among others in the next few months.

“The real intention is to engage the students to put their creations into commercial level, and encourage them to develop concept of revenue-training in their creations,” Tarayao said on the sidelines during the introduction of four public-school teachers who successfully graduated the ICT training program under the Globe BridgeCom initiative.

Unlike software development, the service development aims to encourage IT skilled professionals to develop technology services that will immediately be applicable to consumers in the mobile and web services.

If proven to have good commercial potential, Globe will immediately adopt the innovation, of which intellectual property rights (IPR) will be given to the developer, and school, under a special partnership agreement.

According to Tarayao, Cebu was picked as the pilot area for this new program, taking advantage of the brilliant skills of ICT in Cebu.

Globe, together with USJ-R will formally introduce this new program in the next few weeks.

Initially, Tarayao said Globe will be see to it what kind of service development the students will engage into, depending on the availability of technology enabler the school has.

“The need today is service development,” Tarayao said adding that with the good skills Cebu has, it has a huge potential to develop its own service development technology that will gain attention to local and international telecom and web companies.

Ultimately, GlobeLoves aims to identify each university or college specialization on service development technology. But, as of now, Globe still has to study the different strength of the universities in terms of service development potential.

Meanwhile, Globe strengthens its lead in providing ICT-enhanced education programs to public schools in Central Visayas where there is limited access to information and communication technology (ICT).

Over the years, Globe BridgeCom has embarked on projects that help enrich the learning experience of both students and teachers. These initiatives include Text2Teach for elementary students, Internet-in-Schools Program (ISP) for high school students, and Global Filipino Teachers (GFT) Program for teachers.

This time, Globe’s BridgeCom will move into higher value program, development the research and development (R&D) potential of students to hatch their own innovations for huge commercial purposes.