Rethinking computer-literacy programs for women in Pakistan
A story, originally published on August 23rd ’16 on our old website, showcasing a computer-literacy venture built our YouthFWD Pakistan’s team and student members.
Like its neighbors in the South Asian continent, Pakistan faces the daunting problem of youth unemployment. The Pakistani youth, which forms an estimated 63 million or 63 per cent of the population, is facing myriad challenges and constraints in getting employment. As a part of the Entrepreneurship Boot-camp phase, our student members were expected to discuss and study the various socio-economic and political problems prevalent in their communities and vote on the various issues to select one target problem that they wished to solve. Thus it was not a surprise when most of our student members voted to choose youth unemployment in Pakistan as their target problem.
During the second and third weeks of the Boot camp, the students set out back into their communities, conducting market research and collecting data using their newly-acquired market research skills. The various interviews and data sets provided comprehensive information.
We found that those already frustrated from being a part of the swelling pool of the unemployed students saw the option of going abroad as their most viable tool. But it turns out that not everyone is fortunate enough to leave the country to find a job abroad. As suggested by the facts and figures presented in a fact sheet by The Institute for Policy Reforms (IPR), among the 5.3 unemployed young population, the majority can’t even dream of going overseas and either becomes part of the growing pool of educated unemployed or settles down for low-paid, low-quality jobs after failing to find an ‘option’ equal to their educational qualifications or skills.
We found out that the ones who are hit hard the most are the young students from underprivileged socio-economic backgrounds who had been seeing education as the most powerful resource to escape out of Pakistan’s endemic poverty. One challenge that these young graduates from poverty-hit regions face on a regular basis is competing in the highly-competitive and shrinking job market of Pakistan and getting employment. In spite of being educated, they often fail to get a job due to lack of many necessary skills, including the knowledge of computers.
During the third week of the Boot camp, our members voted to choose computer education as their primary solution to the problem as they went on to develop a business plan for their social venture. However, computer education as a tool to battle unemployment isn’t an idea never heard of in the South Asian continent. Hence, we found it extremely important to assess the status quo landscape of computer-related skills education programs in Pakistan and assess its impact on the lives of the students who had been attending these programs.
While taking a walk in one of the busy streets of the capital city Islamabad, one can spot dozens of hoardings, stuck in the web of electricity cables, advertising the various “prestigious” computer and English language learning centers. We tried to identify the various problems associated with the current status quo programs especially with the learning centers based in the economically poorer regions of the city. We found that not only that these centers charge considerable fees for their courses which discourage the ones from poor economic backgrounds to join but also most of these centers don’t offer guaranteed placements and usually tend to simply keep adding hundreds of their students into the already saturated job market without providing them any considerable practical work experience.
While interviewing some of the students and graduates of these programs, it came as a surprising fact that some of the graduates even tend to not apply for the computer related jobs as they don’t feel confident enough about their computer skills. While these students are used to follow the instructions in the class and try out the newly learnt computer commands once in a week, most of them never get familiar with the skills they need to work at a professional firm. Most of these students lose their jobs to the students who graduated from the expensive learning centers in the main city.
After identifying the various issues in the current running computer education programs, our members went on to work on their business plan for their social venture which aimed to solve these various loopholes. After various rounds of discussion, the Pakistani province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa was selected as our initial target location. One of the 4 provinces of Pakistan, Khyber has a dense population and is one of the most backward socio-economically backward regions of South Asia. The province also has a high concentration of Non-governmental organizations and charities working towards solving the various social problems and our members saw it as a valuable opportunity to partner with the organizations to execute our social venture project.
To create highly effective social venture using the means of computer education to fight unemployment, our members had to design a comprehensive computer literacy course that provided the students a valuable practical work experience, an up-to-date curriculum and much better chances of employment as compared to the learning centers the members visited weeks ago. The course curriculum for our program drew inspiration from the computer courses provided to high school students studying in schools in Pakistan offering the Cambridge GCSEs and A-Levels courses. We found that not only that these courses were up-to-date in terms of the software versions and techniques being included but the course played a huge emphasis on various practical assignments that required students to solve various challenges and use the skill-sets that are usually required in a real workplace (For example: Using MS Access database to maintain records for the human resource department of an imaginary printing press firm).
Following a school-level computer course without any prior experience with computers can be challenging. Hence, our members decided to implement a policy that allows the students of our course to work together with the high school students of Beaconhouse Liberty Campus Lahore (BLL) on various practical work assignments. This would not only allow our students to gain practical work experience but would provide them various co-working skills.
Launch
Once the social venture planned was finalized and reviewed and revised by our various mentors and regional advisors, the YouthFWD team partnered with Young Women Welfare Society, an NGO in Khyber province that had been working on many aspects of the rural villages, mainly helping women set up businesses and implementing various Health and income generating schemes. In May 2016, we worked with the Young Women Welfare Society to set up an IT training institute for women in Chaba village of Faisalabad benefiting not only women from that village but also from the neighboring villages. Moreover, Faisalabad turned out to be a valuable target location as an industrial city which many jobs related to managerial and administration tasks involving the use of IT skills. Using our course curriculum and work experience programs, this training center has been benefiting women, providing them important skills that have enabled them to stand on their own feet.
We worked with YWWS to outreach the various small and medium scale firms in Faisalabad requiring workers with IT skill-sets and over 40 firms, as of today, have promised to give preference to the graduates of YWWS-YouthFWD IT Institute because of their extensive modern day IT skills and prior work experience.
Note: This story was originally published on August 23rd ’16 and has been migrated from our old website.
