Globe
President and CEO Ernest L. Cu with Anne Bouverot, Director General and Member
of the Board of GSMA at the Globe m-Education booth, GSMA Mobile World Congress
in Barcelona, Spain
|
The country’s out-of-school youth can soon learn
English easily and conveniently just by using their mobile phone as leading
telecommunications company Globe Telecom introduces its new English Proficiency
and Training Hotline during the GSMA Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain
where Globe is one of the exhibitors.
The move is in support of the mEducation initiative
of GSM Association which brought together the Department of Education (DepEd),
Technical Education and Skills Development Authority (TESDA) and other industry
players to create education opportunities for OSY nationwide.
The Globe Hotline is an Interactive Voice Recording
(IVR) that could help out-of-school youth build their English language
foundation without the need for formal schooling so that they can break into
the Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) industry, a booming and constantly
growing sector that contributes more than USD 10 Billion to the Philippine
Gross Domestic Product.
It is now being pilot-tested at Bagosphere, a
social enterprise based in Bago City, Negros Occidental funded by Kickstart
Ventures, a startup incubator and investment firm of Globe.
Bagosphere trains OSY to get jobs in the BPO
industry. Thus, once the Globe Hotline students pass the required English
fundamentals, they can opt to join Bagosphere’s two-month BPO training
program. Bagosphere boasts of
having 90% of its graduates employed in the first week of program completion.
“We are leveraging on our expertise in
communications and information technology to bring skills and training to the
underprivileged sector of society so that they can also have a chance to a
brighter future. The key task now
is to monitor success of the Globe Hotline solution both in usage and
effectiveness in improving the knowledge of our out-of-school youth. Later phases of the project will
include expansion of lessons and modules, and usage propagation in the rural
areas,” said Ernest Cu, Globe President and CEO.
At present, there are 4.2 million OSY in the
Philippines who lack resources, basic skills, and opportunities to improve
their standard of living. In rural
areas particularly, schools are too far away and with no internet connectivity,
leaving children and young adults with little or no access to online education
or independent learning. As a
result, OSYs find themselves staying below the poverty line and working in jobs
offering less than the minimum wage.
Once the Globe Hotline becomes available
commercially, Globe mobile service customers can gain convenient access to
English training, acquire English fundamentals, and increase their
employability. They only need to
be equipped with any kind of mobile phone as well as cellular service.
For first time callers, they will undergo a 10
question diagnostic pre-test to assess their skills. After which, they will proceed to English training which has
four lessons that make up the fundamentals for English proficiency such as
parts of speech, parts of a sentence, listening and comprehension, and
pronunciation. Each lesson has a
lecture, practice module, and a test, to check the student’s mastery of the
lesson.
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