DOLE to hire 3,565 youth mentors for IT project

 

Starting this month until December, the Department of Labor and Employment will be hiring 3,565 youth mentors for its Kabataan ITo special project to jumpstart a nationwide familiarization and appreciation sessions on information technology for Filipinos in the disadvantaged sectors.  Labor and Employment Secretary Marianito D. Roque announced this yesterday after he received the reports of the National Reintegration Program for OFWs, the Bureau of Rural Workers and the Bureau of Women and Young Workers—all DOLE offices—about their preparation for the launching of the special project in the third week of October.  "Our regional offices have committed to hire 3,565 information technology youth mentors who will conduct familiarization and appreciation sessions until December. At a ratio of one mentor to two students, about 27,240 young people from the disadvantaged and informal sectors will benefit from these sessions," Roque said.  "We plan a simultaneous launching of the project on October 21 and during the launching, we will already hire 1,507 IT youth mentors across the regions so they can start imparting IT knowledge and skills to 11,666 beneficiaries," he added.   The Kabataan ITo is a DOLE special project designed to teach young Filipinos knowledge and skills in basic information technology without joining the formal education system. The "teachers" or mentors in the project will be youth volunteers who are "IT-enabled".  The mentors will teach an IT module consisting of a preparatory lesson on computer hardware familiarization, computer operation and MS Word processing application, and a final lesson on the use of the Internet for search and communication. The IT sessions will be for 22 hours.  The labor and employment chief said that the mentors, who will render "part-time" service of less than eight hours a day or less than five days a wekk depending on the mentors' availability, will be paid a stipend of P25.00 per mentoring hour. He explained that the budget of P15.02 million will come from the available budgets of the DOLE regional offices.  The DOLE has already identified the venues for the familiarization and appreciation sessions. These will be held in the DOLE regional and field offices, regional offices of the Overseas Workers Welfare Administration, some computer centers, and Public Employment Service Offices, or PESOs which the DOLE and its social partners have earlier furnished with computers.  DOLE regional offices, in cooperation with the PESOs and working youth organizations will recruit the IT mentors who must be results-oriented, computer-adept, and friendly to the disadvantaged youth. They must also be meticulous keeping tab of the progress of the learners, as well as patient in mentoring. "There is a bright future for the knowledgeable and skilled in information technology, and we would like our disadvantaged young people to have a share of this bright future through Kabataan ITo," Roque said.