Empower America has teamed up with the ECDL Foundation (a Dublin, Ireland, based nonprofit organization) and its U.S. licensee, International Computer Driver's License-U.S., to help build a 21st-century work force in Iraq by training and certifying Iraqis in basic computer skills. We are asking firms in the United States and Europe to join with us by underwriting the training and certification of Iraqis in skills that range from the basics of how a computer works through common business and usage applications such as word processing, spreadsheets, databases and Web/e-mail use.
The Iraqi Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research has developed a program to train and certify 5,000 Iraqis during the first year as one small step toward putting this nation on the path to economic self-sufficiency. Ten training centers are ready to begin formal training in the ICDL program, which would allow Iraqis to join more than 4 million other candidates seeking this credential, hundreds of thousands of them in neighboring Middle Eastern countries.
What we are attempting is far from a panacea, but it is a beginning, a template of how future private-sector efforts can help Iraqis help themselves, even in these turbulent times. By stepping up to assist Iraq at this critical time, private firms have a golden opportunity to make an enormous contribution to Iraqi economic development and education, which will pay future dividends to the participating companies in unquantifiable goodwill when life in Iraq stabilizes and international commerce begins to flourish in the country. Call it truly enlightened capitalism.
Presently, most countries in the Middle East recognize the importance of basic computer literacy as a necessary component to the efficiency of a national work force and as an integral component toward human resource development in the 21st century. Countries including Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait have instituted national computer literacy programs and are well on their way to making computers a de facto business requirement.
As the center of IT innovation and technology, the United States has a wealth of knowledge and resources to impart upon this eager audience. Iraqis have long been regarded as quick and astute learners, given the chance to perform. Traditional U.S. secondary and higher education program partnerships have been established during the reconstruction effort through U.S. government funding, while vocational and IT training programs remain on the back burner.
While millions of dollars in computer equipment has been either donated or purchased for rebuilding Iraq, it has been accompanied with little or no IT instruction. The Iraqis have expressed urgency toward launching a national training program.
To my friends in the business community I say, be prepared: Kemp is on a mission and will come knocking at your door. I believe the business community will rise to the occasion as Americans always do when duty calls.