National ICT Fed spurs Digibayanihan thru IT Skills Workshops in SarGen

November 19, 2014, General Santos City – The Digital Innovation Cluster Economic Development (DICED), Inc. in partnership with ICT Solutions Association of Region 12 – General Santos City (ISA 12 – GSC) will launch its first phase of Digibayanihan Training Workshops on November 21, to be held at the Mabuhay IT Park in Ced Avenue, General Santos City. During the launch, Digibayanihan training workshop sessions for Sarangani and General Santos City will provide the senior citizens sector with free training on Basic Digital Literacy primarily on emailing and social media.

Conducted by 21 volunteer trainers, the workshops in GenSan is part of the series of DigiBayanihan ICT training workshops held simultaneously in five other key cities across the country on November 21 and 22. Led by the National ICT Confederation of the Philippines (NICP), ICT training workshops will be held in Davao, Bacolod, Naga and Legaspi, as spearheaded by provinces’ respective ICT councils.

More training workshops for GenSan and Sarangani are in the pipeline for other priority sectors such as Children in Conflict with the Law (CICL), Community Youth or Out of School Youth (OSY), Farmers/Agri-Sector, New Graduates or those seeking employment, Women, Barangay Officials, Health Workers, Public Schools, Barangay Librarians, Cooperatives, and other local volunteers will follow after the launching to include the Trainers Training for Volunteer Trainers.

The training content of the workshops will range from basic technology education such as Personal Computer (PC) familiarization and operation, word processing speed and accuracy, PC-based drawing and digital art, and using email and collaboration tools, to more advanced skills such as photo editing and PC troubleshooting.

Aimed at raising the level of digital literacy among the Filipino population, the workshops form part of DigiBayanihan, the unified efforts of the government, academe and IT industry to equip a greater numbers of Filipinos with 21st century skills that will enhance global competitiveness, workforce employability and entrepreneurship.

“In the spirit of bayanihan, we have been amplifying our efforts to advance digital literacy as a priority in the Philippines’ human and economic development agenda,” said Yvonne Flores, Intel Philippines Corporate Affairs Group Manager and Secretariat for DigiBayanihan. “DigiBayanihan partners are working together to reach Filipinos who want to learn basic digital skills and use these skills to transform the way they do their daily activities. The key here is to teach new ways of doing daily activities with the use of ICT devices. The trainees should immediately realize how the use of ICT devices can improve the way they access information, communicate and more importantly how they transact business.”

The DigiBayanihan movement continues to call on other organizations and groups to join this multisectoral initiative. Through its Volunteer Hub on www.digibayanihan.org, interested organizations and groups can sign up to be part of the movement. The hub also contains readily available training content such as Intel Easy Steps activity cards which are part of a specially-developed digital literacy curriculum developed by Intel.

The workshops in GenSan andSarangani were organized with the partnership of Office of the Senior Citizens Affairs (OSCA), iSPEAK, Beyond Access, ACLC – Gensan, Mabuhay IT Park, and the Local Government Units of Sarangani and General Santos City.