“You can have data without information, but you cannot have information without data,” quips American computer programmer and science fiction writer Daniel Keys Moran. It’s true—any profession is stabilized and any field is perpetuated by the right handling and analyzing of data. Digital competence is also vital in this age of easy screens. With the right knowledge about the information that comes and leaves, we’re able to know what kind of questions need to be answered, or where we need to start when we want to do a breakthrough for our businesses or careers.
Currently, the Philippines faces two main challenges relating to education: investment in human capital and digital competitiveness. Non-profit organization FTW (For The Women) Foundation sees that the most vulnerable in this sphere are new grads and job seekers, especially women. Also, only half of the working-age women are in the labor force.
Does the remaining survive in supposedly stellar careers? Not so much of them. In contrast, 40 percent of employed women in the Philippines are engaged in limiting and unstable jobs, that it would be a sin to call it a “career.” Luckily, the organization that sees the inequality is the same who works to unfasten these troubles. In FTW’s video compilation of scholars’ experiences, one line summarizes the whole of the struggle: “We don’t have a lot of opportunities for women.”
FTW Foundation trains women who are in need of skills for the digital and data-driven world. As we are slowly being forced to swallow the notion that learning should always come with a price because education should be a privilege rather than a right, FTW serves as a fighting initiative. It sheds brighter light to the financially disadvantaged but highly-motivated females. Sooner or later, they are equipped with entry-level talent for digital marketing and data science roles. For both courses, they pretty much have a world-class offering—think regression algorithms to advanced machine learning, customer journey mapping to Google Analytics.
You need to know that FTW has an estimated 5,000 scholars per year, and you can be one of them. What exactly are they looking for? The org puts under its wing bright women with at least two years of college experience who cannot afford to put themselves in training, or feel lacking in job hunting. After about 72 hours of comprehensive learning you won’t just find in books, these women scholars discover bigger ease in finding jobs.
Ready to ride the digital wave? Visit FTW Foundation.
Art by Aira Ydette