MANILA, Philippines - 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 $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.