Thursday, December 4, 2008

Microsoft Fuels European E-Skills and E-Inclusion

With a 5 million Euro investment

While in Europe at the start of October 2008, Microsoft Chief Executive Officer Steve Ballmer underlined the company's commitment to continue investing despite the global financial crisis and the perspective of lower revenues. In this regard, one investment the software giant is doing in Europe is related to grants worth no less than 5 million Euros.
The company revealed that both financial and software resources would be delivered to non-governmental organizations (NGO) across Europe, which would be focused on community skills training projects.

“A skilled IT workforce is essential to creating new jobs and fuelling economic growth in Europe, yet almost 300 million Europeans have no e-skills today. We hope to bridge this gap by investing into community-based projects to further advance e-inclusion in Europe,” revealed Jan Muehlfeit, Microsoft Europe chairman.

NGOs in no less than 30 countries across Europe will benefit from the 5 million Euros from Microsoft, which will ultimately serve to “e-ducate” people with disabilities, seniors and young unemployed persons. The company emphasized the need to fill the deficit of e-inclusion and e-skills in the EU.

Microsoft Unlimited Potential Community Technology Skills Program, in collaboration with NGOs and also with other members of the industry will manage to deliver, via over 3,000 Community Technology Centers spread across Europe, a chance to an estimated 4.7 million people over the course of the next three years. In 2007, Microsoft spent no less than 50 million Euros on European e-inclusion projects, and the software giant promised that it would up the stakes even with the economic downturn.

“We are enormously proud of the partner organisations that won these awards. It is an excellent recognition of their hard work and dedication to e-inclusion,” Muehlfeit added. “For Microsoft every single project is a winner, as each one demonstrates that projects focused on helping people find and retain jobs in Europe is vital to the economy.”