About the Program

The European IT Service Center and Hanns Seidel Foundation with co-funding from the European Union initiated a 5-year program that takes a progressive approach to answering the call for more qualified workers in the IT/BPO sector.

The program’s activities aim to provide job opportunities to marginalized groups to help contribute to the reduction of poverty in the Philippines. Targeting students and women from low-income groups, and under-skilled IT graduates and professionals, this program seeks to increase their chances for employability by providing access to industry-responsive training courses and curricula, developed through partnerships with industry, academe, and government.

At present, approximately 155,000 workers are employed by the Philippine IT/BPO sector. This program complements President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo’s Ten-Point Agenda to create 6-10 million jobs by 2010, 1 million of which are targeted by the Commission on Information and Communications Technology (CICT) for the IT/BPO industry.