AMER SIAL
The restive Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province may seem an unlikely place for digital workers to thrive but a World Bank report contrarily finds that the provincial government’s initiative of offering free training for youth in freelancing is paying off.
The report says, the provincial government together with the World Bank in 2015, conducted a series of pilot programs to test a model of digital skill training for youth. The province with nearly 16 million youth and few available jobs locally, there was a pressing need to think outside the box in terms of equipping young people with the skills, knowledge and capabilities to take on the future.
Based on the results of this collaboration, the provincial government launched the Youth Employment Program (YEP) in early 2016, offering free training for youth in freelancing. Around 50 students were accepted per training, and based on their academic profiles classified into technical and non-technical groups.
YEP was piloted in seven districts of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa including Abbottabad, Bannu, Dera Ismail Khan, Kohat, Malakand, Mardan and Peshawar. The pilot phase will run until January 2017 with an aim to train 2100 students in digital freelancing, and will develop models to eventually expand digital skills to all youth in the province.
YEP is the first publicly funded program in Pakistan that focuses on building practical skills to link youth with international job markets through cloud-based technology.
In this way, the government aims to bridge the widening gap between students who are graduating every year and jobs that are available locally.
Growing connectivity, cloud technology, and the emergence of new business outsourcing models have lowered the barriers to entry for global employment, even for youth in remote parts of Pakistan. The key ingredients to accessing this employment: access to the internet, basic skills, and awareness, and the pilot program tested different approaches to supporting youth to develop online work skills, the report said.
Samia Saeed is from Dir Lower, one of the remotest parts of the province. With MA in English Literature and teaching grade 2 students at a local private school, she always had the skills for content writing but lacked the knowledge of utilizing it to earn money. As she does a second review of her 800 words write-up on “Effectiveness of Online Learning”, Samia is excited about the prospect and potential of freelancing. “My first client was overall happy about the quality of the content I have drafted. I have been asked to review it further so that it becomes fit to print. That would be my first freelance working experience and I attribute this to YEP”.
For Muhammad Uzair Khan, logging into Fiverr every morning to review the status update on all the creative write-ups that he has posted on his profile has become a work ritual. Living in Peshawar and doing an MPhil in Biotechnology, he has learnt a great deal about content writing by polishing his skills for developing web blogs and digital content. “I always looked out for an opening that would enable me to offer my writing services to earn, but I just didn’t know how to make that work. With YEP, I have gained the practical knowledge and improved my writing skills to reach out to the world”.