Just four weeks after the announcement of the “21 Century Techforce” project, focused on duplicating the Island’s skilled talent to meet the needs and opportunities of the technology sector, a large number of professionals have shown interest in being part of the initiative that It seeks a historic transformation at the labor level.
“The preparation of citizens in technology and digital knowledge will define the relevance of Puerto Rico in the global techno-industrial revolution. 21st Century TechForce creates the ecosystem, inserting higher education, universities and the business sector to train 50,000 Puerto Ricans in the next 10 years. A tech-savvy workforce is more relevant to many companies than traditional incentives. These are still important, but companies like HPE and Honeywell value the jurisdictions with the largest number of human resources trained in technology when choosing where to establish their operations globally,” explained the secretary of the Department of Economic Development. and Commerce (DDEC), Manuel Cidre.
He added “21st Century TechForce is a project in progress with specific work teams, funds, dates and metrics. The private, educational, and government sectors are betting on the goal of positioning Puerto Rico within the top 10 jurisdictions in the states and territories in the United States, technologically more capable, which will undoubtedly generate well-paid jobs in the medium and long term. Cidre declared.
The focus of this effort, which has been assigned a budget of $50MM through the Fiscal Plan, is focused on the creation of non-traditional academic programs, aimed at developing talent in economic sectors tied to the technological revolution of the 21st century. Through this project announced by the governor, Pedro R. Pierluisi, and led by the DDEC, it is intended that Puerto Rico become one of the main states or territories in human resources specialized in technology.
With this goal in mind, webinars of the first two programs were offered, “short form credentials” in which 56 people and 22 in “stackable credentials” participated. Regarding the third K-12 initiative, 21 schools were identified, together with the Department of Education (DE), one per region, and a “teacherthon” workshop was held for teachers to submit their proposals.
For his part, the secretary of the DE, Eliezer Ramos Parés, commented that “inserting several of our schools in this initiative is a step forward in the work that we carry out from Education so that children and young people develop in technology issues, science, mathematics and engineering. The seven educational regions of our agency have been identifying schools and projects of interest to benefit from this project, which will undoubtedly train them for their post-university studies. We will be allies of the DDEC and they will have our highest collaboration”.
Meanwhile, the assistant secretary of Strategic Sectors of the DDEC, Humberto Mercader, explained that the workshop was focused on how they would invest the money from the Digital Educational Innovation Program (PIDE) grant. “This competition was to select the seven schools that will submit revised proposals and receive grants of between $100,000 and $200,000. This is to design and implement a program that increases the number of students studying Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) careers,” he said.
The funds are directed to cover teacher training expenses, “hackathons”, “bootcamps” for students, summer bridge programs, company visits, technical equipment, etc.
Mercader added that “we are looking for ideas that we can implement and serve as models to revolutionize the educational channel in Puerto Rico. We want to develop the most innovative and sustainable ideas to expose and prepare students for 21st century careers. We seek to change the elementary and secondary education system that does not provide early exposure to careers related to technology. This prevents us from having enough competitive local talent in a critical sector for economic development.”
The projects available are: the grant program for short-term training providers to increase the number of people to certify, the grant program for universities to develop micro-credential programs, and the program to impact colleges that lead students to careers. technological
Those interested in participating can find their way through the frequently asked questions that are published on the DDEC platform. Proposals can be submitted until June 5, 2023, and notifications to grantees will be published in mid-June.
