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Orange Jordan and EU launch training programmes in Balqa

The new programmes in Balqa will include an Orange FabLab to train the applicants on digital fabrication skills.

Orange Jordan has signed an agreement with Vocational Training Corporation to launch Orange FabLab, a coding academy, and an accelerator at a vocational training center in Al-Salt in the governorate of Balqa, under the patronage of the Minister of Labor, Nayef Stetieh.

The Director General of the Vocational Training Corporation, Engineer Ahmed Gharaibeh, and Orange Jordan’s Deputy CEO/CFO, Raslan Deiranieh, signed the agreement to launch the programmes, as part of ‘Innovation Space’, a three-year project co-funded by the EU’s ‘Innovation for Enterprise Growth and Jobs’ programme aiming to promote digital empowerment and innovation culture on a wider scale.

The new free digital programmes that will be launched at the vocational training corporation in Balqa are an extension of the Innovation Space project that seeks to expand Orange’s free digital programmes and allow youth to benefit from training in digital skills growing in demand to enhance their employability and support them in launching their own projects.

Under the agreement, the new programmes in Balqa will include an Orange FabLab to train the applicants on digital fabrication skills, tools, and machinery to enable joiners to create prototypes, the coding academy to train students for seven months on programming languages with the aim of ‘Training for Employment’, in addition to an accelerator supporting startups to enhance their growth and expansion.

Nayef Steitieh affirmed that this agreement comes to effect with Orange Jordan, the responsible digital leader, and one of the global Orange group’s subsidiaries, through its corporate social responsibility strategy, in response to the directives of HM King Abdullah II and the crown prince Al Hussein Bin Abdullah II, and within the government’s directions to modernise and update the vocational training ecosystem, to create a sustainable impact on the lives of Jordanians.

These programmes emanate from Orange Jordan’s social role and leading efforts in implementing many free programmes to empower Jordanians and promote digital inclusion, reflecting positively on socioeconomic development, Stetieh added.

Orange Jordan’s Deputy CEO/CFO, Raslan Deiranieh, expressed excitement about the cooperation between Orange Jordan and the Vocation Training Corporation towards achieving common goals that will contribute to empowering youth with the needed skills to join the labour market, noting that the digital programmes in Balqa are part of Orange Jordan’s keenness to cover the Kingdom’s regions through expanding in the Capital, North and South, as the number of beneficiaries/certificates granted within the “Innovation Space” project reached 20,000.

The company, added Deiranieh, is committed to expanding the circle of beneficiaries under the “Innovation Space” project, stemming from Orange Jordan’s role as a responsible digital leader that drives sustainable empowerment to enhance the beneficiaries’ contribution to socioeconomic progress. He also expressed pride in the strategic partnerships working towards this goal.

The Director General of the Vocational Training Corporation, Engineer Ahmed Gharaibeh, stated that the corporation is keen to promote partnership with all parties linked to vocation and technical training in developmental sectors to provide sustainable training and employment opportunities for males and females and to contribute to the government’s efforts to employ youth in the Kingdom’s governorates.

The corporation’s plans include turning to technological applications, AI, IoT, the science and coding of robotics, and data management fields, Gharaibeh noted.

The EU-funded “Innovation Space” project supports the expansion of Orange Jordan’s digital programmes to include nine Community Digital Centers, five new coding academies, five FabLabs, eight start-up accelerators and incubators, in addition to an “Innovation Hub” at the Orange Digital Village in Amman.