The Digital Education Project was born from Cooperand’s desire to offer academic opportunities to Latin American boys and girls aged 14 years old, who reside in the homes enrolled at the Don Bosco Project, as well as to boys and girls from different homes, students from the Young College of Bolivia, and neighbouring districts with limited resources.

The Andorran government, the country of Carla Riestra President of Cooperand, along with the Don Bosco Project, which Carla has collaborated with for many years, sought to develop a way to achieve a project that offers different professional trainings, ensures jobs and is self-sufficient, becoming a source of income for the Instituto Mamà Margarita, Centro de Enseñanza Alternativo which houses the Digital Education Project.

Carla, with more than 14 years of experience in education, and Sergio, with 30 years of experience in the business and technological world, collaborating with the experience on the ground of the managers of Don Bosco and Ofprobol (Santa Cruz Office for Project Management of the Salesians), were able to set up a project that combined classrooms to teach vocational training and an Incubator (last year studies’ program) of productive experience which could provide feedback for the future.
Having in mind a crucial premise for a successful outcome, which is to ensure the greatest possible number of real jobs at the end of the students’ training in Bolivia, the project is focused on providing training in one of the fastest growing sectors and with the highest demand in the market: Information Technologies.

DIGITAL EDUCATION PROJECT
Everyone involved in the development of this project covers all the necessary and essential elements to ensure its long-term success:

• The Government of Andorra provides the necessary equipment to develop the project along with the investments in software licenses and the development of the necessary solutions for the training management and the project production.
• The Don Bosco Project provides classrooms and teachers needed to conduct the training.
• Cooperand provides knowledge to develop courses, training hours for specific training tools and the management of the Incubator.

The Digital Education Project provides training courses in the following fields: Digital Solutions Consultant, Application Development for Mobile Devices, Integrated Solutions in the Cloud, Digital Integrated Security Specialists, etc. The demand for these careers is high in the market and they all offer a great projection. However, some ensure getting a job more easily than others once the training is completed.
It is therefore a basic requirement of the project, not to start new career paths unless we can ensure at least 20 jobs for the first graduates from each vocational training course. The project will not have much of a future if our recent graduates can not find skilled employment. At the end of the day, the motivation that pushes all our students to make the necessary efforts to reach the end of their training, is simply getting a tool that ensures their integration into the workplace as adults and in society as people who fully contribute to it.

DIGITAL SOLUTIONS CONSULTANT
The first year of the Digital Education Project, keeping in mind to ensure real jobs at the end of the course, focuses on training in developing digital solutions for business management (Digital Solutions Consultant).

This course offers three years of theoretical training covering all aspects of the Advanced Office, Basic and Advanced training as a consultant in FileMaker Platform development as well as training in entrepreneurship. There is also year of practical training already working on real processes for different customers that work with the Incubator.

This training covers 2,400 hours required by the Bolivian Ministry of Education to issue the corresponding degree of Technician, together with the certificate issued by the Instituto Mamà Margarita and the possibility for the student who may be interested, to obtain a degree as certified FileMaker Consultant, an official certification from one of the most recognized American companies in the sector of new technologies, subsidiary company of the first world company in the TI sector, Apple Inc.

How does the Digital Education Project ensure jobs?
After having developed first a comprehensive digital solution which helps managing the entire Don Bosco Project, and in 2015, a different one for a corporate business in Santa Cruz, all combined with the development platform that is taught in training course (Digital Solutions Consultant), it is necessary to ensure jobs which can provide the maintenance, upgrades, modifications and extensions of these digital solutions. The aforementioned corporate business will need more than 30 jobs nationwide in the coming years.

All this effort must be carried out without leaving aside the commercial task achieved with the team of the Office for Job Placement and all the "Friends of the Don Bosco Project.” All of them are offered the implementation, free of charge, of a solution in their business management for a given area, which they define, (a solution developed with the FileMaker Platform, the core of the training given to the students in the course of Digital Solutions Consultant). The customer, in return, agrees to use the services of our students, already graduated as consultants for the maintenance and subsequent modifications of their products. In other words, they offer new jobs for the project.

Thus, after three years of training, students will live in the Incubator with our professional staff. They will already operate in the national market and start working and getting their first salary, as well as getting used to work in the market led by the Digital Education Project, so that after one year, they will be able to work on their own with customers, or continue in the Incubator.
 

Thanks Don Bosco Project!

Thanks Andorran Government!