One hundred and fifty youths from Georgetown, Linden and Berbice will be trained in digital and data skills over three months, according to a release on Sunday from the University of Guyana.
The training programme is the result of a collaboration between the University of Guyana and SlashRoots Foundation (SRFDN) which was entered into in 2019.
The training encompasses Digital/Data Literacy, Data Management, Data Visualization, Data Integration and Big Data Analytics.
The release said that the three-month training programme began on March 6 and will run until May 29, 2021. The orientation ceremony for the first two cohorts, comprising eighty students, was held virtually on March 5th. The University of Guyana lecturers, current students, and a few graduates of the Computer Science Department at the University of Guyana will deliver the programme completely in Guyana. The commencement of the programme suffered delays due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and which required that the original face-to-face format to be converted to online.
The project is funded by Google.org, Google’s philanthropy organization, and executed by a Network of Regional Partners across the Caribbean through the Caribbean School of Data’s (CSOD) blended learning model. The project aims to train 1500 young men and women, ages 18-29 in digital and data-skills and help them to acquire new job competencies, essential for the emerging digital economy and the workplace.
Dr. Maurice McNaughton, Director for the Centre of Excellence and Innovation at the Mona School of Business & Management in his presentation said: “One of the things COVID has forced many of us, both society and individually, to sort of retreat into our homes or retreat into enclosed spaces, and one of the things we think is incredibly important for this kind of learning experiences is the idea of an online community. So we encourage students along with their facilitators to take advantage of the online platform to interact with each other and share their ideas”.
The organisers have said that once the students have completed their training, several of them are expected to be placed into jobs and internships, and on this basis, called on the private sector to lend support.
