28 January, 2023: A ceremony was recently conducted at the Faculty of Law, University of Turbat for the distribution of stipends among the successful trainees of the Ignite-funded DigitalSkills Training & Support Program for Southern Balochistan under the patronage of the Ministry of IT & Telecommunications.
The chief guest for the ceremony was Sadiq Iftikhar, Minister of State for IT & Telecom. Other dignitaries included Dr. Abdul Malik Baloch, Ex-Chief Minister of Balochistan, and Lala Rasheed Dashti, Advisor to the Chief Minister Baluchistan, who graced the ceremony as guests of honor.
Speaking on the occasion, Sadiq Iftikhar said that he was proud to see so many youths dedicated to learning and education in Balochistan. The State Minister emphasized the need for taking joint efforts for the promotion of IT education in this part of the country.
He also urged the importance of digital Skills and the role of the IT ministry in the development of skilled Human Resources in the province. He appreciated the efforts of Ignite, Virtual University, University of Turbat, University of Gwadar, and BUET Khuzdar and congratulated the participants on the successful execution of the training project in Balochistan.
CEO Ignite, Asim Shahryar Husain, addressed the participants through a video message and informed the audience about Ignite’s digiskills.pk program which is Pakistan’s largest online training program for freelancers and has received more than 3 million enrollments in 15 different freelancing courses over the last four years.
According to an earnings study conducted by a 3rd party last year, freelancers trained through digiskills.pk earned $290 million during 2021-22.
He said that because of the connectivity issues in Southern Balochistan, the Ministry of IT, Ignite, and VU decided to launch classroom-based training in 3 districts of Southern Baluchistan including Turbat, Khuzdar, and Gwadar in January of last year.
The program has been a success because against a target of 5,000 enrollments, VU and Ignite have achieved 7,800 enrollments after one year. Most importantly, 33% of the enrollments are by female freelancers which shows their commitment to learning and self-reliance.
He congratulated the freelancers who have benefitted from this training program and hoped that they get both local and international freelancing jobs in the future to earn good livelihoods for their families.
In the end, stipends were distributed by the chief guest among the freelancers who had successfully completed digiskills trainings.
