Google, DICT partner to make Pinoys more tech-savvy

MANILA, Philippines — Google Philippines has partnered with the Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT) to provide Filipino workers and learners the ICT training they need for work here and abroad.

Jeffrey Ian Dy, ICT assistant secretary for upskilling, said Google Philippines coordinated with the agency’s ICT Literacy and Competency Development Bureau for the initiative to make the training program available to the Filipino workforce and even the student population.

“As the country is embarking on a journey towards recovery, a sizable part of the country’s local workforce either totally lost their jobs or found themselves unable to step up to the current technological demands of the current job market (under the) new normal. Setting a new and sustainable means of income generation through stable employment is proving to be harder now than that of the recent past,” Dy pointed out.

“To address these challenges, we aim to upskill and reskill the country’s population and create more employment opportunities across the citizenry’s age and qualification spectrum,” he said.

Google, through its Coursera web platform, will offer those qualified four courses: IT Support, User Experience (UX) Design, Data Analytics and Project Management.

Each course shall focus on developing a particular set of ICT skills – from troubleshooting and systems administration to project management and business processing.

A scholarship system will also be available through a criteria-based candidate selection process to allow Filipinos with limited financial resources to participate in this initiative.

Dy said the program does not stop with the upskilling and reskilling of the program participants as it also seeks to establish an Employer Consortium and Outplacement Program.

In line with this, the program targets prospective employers to consider Google Career Certificate holders for entry-level roles in their companies and engage recruitment partners to run outplacement programs to help graduates find employment.