Google scholarships to be offered in Sindh govt schools

Sindh Chief Minister Syed Murad Ali Shah witnessed the signing ceremony between Sindh Information, Science & Technology (IST) and Techvalley Pakistan for Google Career Certification Scholarship program 2023.

Speaking on the occasion, the CM said that the MOU between the provincial IT dept and Techvalley for advancing Google scholarships to the students studying in government schools, youth, and transgenders for receiving IT-based training or doing IT-based courses to enable them to earn a respectable livelihood. Techvalley Pakistan in collaboration with Google has conducted early coding programs in selected schools of the education department, in district South wherein the children have been imparted IT skills, particularly early coding program, and the training process was coordinated by IS&T Department Govt. of Sindh.

Google would like to scale up this activity across Sindh. As a future course of action, Techvalley Pakistan will commence with other programs such as CS (computer science) First, Digital Google Garage, Be Internet Awesome, Google Cloud Solutions, and Project Management certifications for individuals, youth, and the working staff of Sindh province. Earlier, IS&T department of the Sindh govt had signed MoU with Techvalley, and Google Pakistan for offering various training courses to contribute to human capital development in the areas of the Technology sector. Besides, Google has also shown its commitment to enhancing the education sector’s capacity in respect of Education Tools, Teachers’ Training & Certifications, Empowering IT Staff and Transforming Computer Labs.

The current Google offer is free certification courses for the youth of Sindh in IT support, IT Automation, Data Analytics, Project Management, UX Design, Digital Marketing E-Commerce, cyber security, Advance Data Analytics, and Advance Business Intelligence. The total scholarship offered by Google is up to 5000. The total training hours for each certification is 160 hours within the period of four months. The program is inclusive and provides an equal opportunity to women and people with special abilities to equip themselves with the IT skillset to get more employment opportunities in the IT world onshore and offshore visa vis availing freelancing opportunities. It will be an online certification through Coursera.

It is also submitted for the kind perusal of the worthy Chief Minister Sindh that the IS&T department is focusing on human capital development and the two programs such as ‘IT Industry Academia Industry bridge program’ and ‘IT Industry Readiness Boot camp’ are taken up from the budget committed for the pro-poor initiatives. Both the capacity development programs shall be done for Rs. 404 million. The above-mentioned programs are meant to train IT graduates in soft skills, data science, gaming &animation, and other areas. For one of the above-mentioned programs,  IT Industry Academia Industry bridge program’, the target audience is the under graduate IT students studying in their respective universities’ 6th, 7th & 8th semesters.

The program was attended by CM Special Assistant Tanzila Habiba, Chief Secretary Sohail Rajput, Secretary Colleges Ahmad Bux Narejo, Secretary U&B Mureed Rahmoon, Head of Techvelly Pakistan Sobia Ikram, CEO Umer Farooq, Google project specialist Timothy Polani, Google’s Country Lead Pakistan Haris Sufian and others.