It all begins with an idea.

What if young Haitian professionals could become competitive and attractive enough to join the global technology workforce? What would prevent a talented young engineer from contributing to the success of a multinational firm without requiring her to leave her country? Such ability could help close the high joblessness rate and bring money into the local economy.

There would be many barriers to entry, but we decided to tackle the skill and experience gap.

We decided to create a training program on high demand technology skills in Data Analytics and Data Engineering comparable to those in need by national/international technology firms.

Why Data Analytics? Businesses, small and large, are overwhelmed by unstructured data from many sources. This data can come from transactions, customer behavior, market trends and more than ever, IoT devices. Organizations must find ways to manage, structure and analyze it to drive important business decisions. Thus, organizations are increasingly turning to Data Engineers to optimally structure data and to Data Analysts to extract actionable insights that can drive business decisions.

To create the training program we leveraged the industry experience of a board member (who runs a tech firm) and that of one of his partner firms. This allowed us to hone in on the skills needed by the data engineers and data analysts they hire and rely on to perform mission-critical work.

Our program would consist of a 4-week Data Foundations Course followed by an 8-week program in either data engineering or data analytics. The training would be a blended-learning curriculum delivered remotely by industry professionals and requires 6-8 hrs per day of commitment.

The program would last for 3 months and would offer additional preparation and coaching in interviewing and workforce behavior.

For best chances of success, the participant would require a high school diploma, moderate tech skills, and have some degree of fluency in English.

Following the program, the most committed participants would receive internship opportunities and possible job recommendations.

To achieve the program we needed various elements: We already discussed the curriculum. We needed instructors to deliver the training and students with the requisite background, equipment and availability. However, we also needed to overcome the logistical hurdles of delivering such an interactive training remotely, including steady access to electricity and high-speed internet in Haiti.

Ultimately, the program became possible through the collaboration of these partners:.

AYIFOMATIK is the charitable arm we created to focus on the program

ARUS is our India-based learning delivery partner.

ESIH (L’Ecole Supérieure Infotronique d’Haiti) is our school partner through which we found students of the right level, an adequate facility and equipment to run the program.

ANALYTICS INTELL is a business intelligence solution provider located in the US. They are one of our donor and charitable giving partners.

Candidates for the program were L1 through L4 university students at ESIH. After a series of interviews, we selected 16 participants. 3 young ladies and 13 gentlemen.

Training took place from April through August 2022.

To ensure program success, we hired one on-site project manager who was able to handle the day-to-day running and problem solving of the program as well as documenting what went on.

We are more than glad that 14 of the 16 selected participants finished the program and received a certificate of completion.

From the 14 graduates, 6, so far, were able to secure internships after the program and 4 received job offers. 3 of them, working remotely with one of our partner firms, 1 with a local telecommunications company.

Our aim now is to learn from the experience and repeat and expand the program.

In the future, we would like to involve the 1st year alumni either as being teaching assistants or as at witness speakers to future participants to engage them to give their best.