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Graduate Entrepreneurship Training through IT (GET-IT), the joint programme developed by HP and Microenterprise Acceleration Institute (MEA-I) which offers school leavers and university graduates aged 16-25 training courses that combine business and IT skills, has just become much more accessible. A new portal, the GET-IT City will offer the training content online. Serious games, a range of video and audio clips and a simulated online city will be included to make learning IT and business skills fun as well as educational.
We spoke with Jelena Godjevac, executive director of MEA-I, who told us about the features of the new portal, and how serious games can serve to increase business awareness and IT skills.
Q. Can you provide some details on what GET-IT City is all about and the advantages of the new online portal to young entrepreneurs?
JG. We have had some tremendous results in the first year of the GET-IT programme, during which we set up 70 GET-IT centres across 25 countries and trained 8,755 young people.
The GET-IT City portal is an extension of this work – it allows us to offer the training courses to young people aged 16-25 who would like to learn how to create and run a business or to improve their job prospects with better business and IT skills.
The portal is a rich media environment that offers a range of interactive learning modules that include videos, animated features and virtual simulations.
Information is organised across a virtual city and can be accessed by entering virtual buildings that hold different types of information and content. There is an HP house, a Hall of Games, a Movie Theatre to watch videos and the My Business house that holds the user’s learning and game achievements so far.
Q. What is your experience with interactive content such as online games?
JG. We included so-called serious games tailored to this age group on the portal. Serious games are an application of games concepts, technologies and ideas to pass through a learning process in a most entertaining way.
The first of the GET-IT games to launch in the next month will be a game that aims to raise awareness about IT security. We applied ENISA recommendations (European Network and Information Security Agency) and followed their guidelines to IT security. The game allows young people to play, to have fun and learn how to ensure the security of their computers.
Q. What was the reason behind launching the portal?
JG. Due to the great impact the GET-IT training has made so far we felt it was important to supplement our training with a substantial online offer for a potentially much larger group of young people. Our goal is to dramatically increase the number of people we reach through GET-IT.
It’s also an opportunity to showcase cutting edge technology and successful teaching methodology for online learning and it complements our experience in curriculum design very well.
Due to the increasing international reach of GET-IT there is a great potential to build a community of GET-IT teachers, trainees, alumni and other stakeholders, so the portal will serve as a point of reference and an opportunity to connect with each other for anyone involved in GET-IT.
Q. The HP GET-IT programme was launched in May 2007. How successful has it been, both for young entrepreneurs and also for MEA-I and HP?
JG. So far, 8.755 young people across 25 countries were trained on the GET-IT curriculum since we launched the programme a year ago and 40 percent were able to find a job after attending the training. We aim to grow this programme in the next years to reach 500.000+ students by 2010!
More than 120 trainers from local NGOs have been trained to be able to successfully teach GET-IT skills to young unemployed graduates in their communities. The results are very encouraging.
In Nigeria, after only three months of training, 20% of the trainees found a job or created their business. In Russia, in one center 90% of the trainees found a job.
Q. What are your plans for GET-IT over the next twelve months?
JG. In 2009, we will open 30 new GET-IT training centres in Africa, the Middle East and Russia and we will further enhance the GET-IT City portal. We will permanently add more online collaboration tools to allow GET-IT centres and students to connect with each other around the world to share best practices and exchange ideas.
Further information
Visit the GET-IT City portal
Read more about GET-IT
Read more about MEA-I
Read the blog entry
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