Remarks by George Deikun, USAID India Mission
Director, at the Education and Employment Summit in
Hyderabad
March 06, 2007
Good morning. I’m pleased to welcome you to the
Second Global Summit of the Education and Employment
Alliance (EEA) as a representative of the United
States Agency for International Development. First,
I’d like to thank William Reese, Chief Executive
Officer of the International Youth Foundation (IYF)
for organizing this Summit and the Indian School of
Business for hosting it. I’m especially happy to see
so many partners of the Alliance from Egypt,
Indonesia, Morocco, Pakistan, the Philippines and
India, who have come together at this workshop to
learn from collective experiences, share lessons
learned and exchange best practices across the
spectrum of education and employment.
In a recent announcement the Administrator of
U.S. Agency for International Development, Randall
Tobias emphasized that “public-private partnerships
are a vital part of leveraging resources to advance
human potential”. I strongly believe that
public-private partnerships can contribute very
significantly to advance human potential since
partnerships allow for pooling of resources and the
sharing of expertise and ideas. The other advantage
of partnerships is that they promote mutual
ownership of a common goal- in this case-
educational opportunities for all.
USAID India recognizes the growing importance of
public-private partnerships to expand educational
opportunities. In India, USAID’s focus in the
education sector has been to improve the quality of
education and to bring hard-to-reach children back
into a formal learning structure that will
eventually prepare them for the workforce. We have
cooperated with state governments as well as NGOs to
support the government’s goal of “Education for All”
by bringing quality education to children at both
mainstream and alternative schools. We have also
helped to integrate new approaches in education,
including the use of information and broadcast
technology, for distance learning.
We have joined with EEA and IYF in our
partnerships on quality education and skills
training – The Quality Education and Skills Training
(QUEST) Alliance. This partnership includes public,
private and non-government organizations – Azim
Premji Foundation, CAP Foundation, Dr. Reddy’s
Foundation, Pratham, Microsoft, WIPRO and Lucent
Technologies. All of these partners are working
together to develop technology tools to improve the
quality of education and provide training for
disadvantaged youth.
QUEST also brings another USAID partner, the
Education Development Center (EDC), as a resource
partner. EDC is successfully implementing USAID’s
flagship Educational Technology program that reaches
over 13 million children across four States with
educational technology interventions to improve the
quality of education. Many new partners will join in
the near future as the QUEST Alliance pilots new
innovations in information and communication
technologies which are designed to improve the
quality of education and and develop workforce
skills for young people.
As you know, the International Youth Foundation
was selected from among 400 alliances as the
recipient of the 2006 Global Development Alliance
Award for Excellence for its work with Entra 21, an
innovative workforce development program operating
in 18 countries throughout Latin America and the
Caribbean. I congratulate IYF for their excellent
work. While other partners continue to contribute
technical and other resources to the Alliance, we
look to IYF in particular for furthering and
deepening partnerships with businesses in our QUEST
Alliance work in India.
Over the next two days, you will have
opportunities to provide your observations and
recommendations on building alliances and further
develop strategies to widen our circle of partners
and programs by exchanging ideas and experiences. I
hope that the deliberations at this summit will be
useful to both our own QUEST partners here, as well
as to the delegates from the five other countries
that are members of the EEA alliance. Through our
joint efforts to create opportunities for a brighter
tomorrow, we are confident that we can help the
disadvantaged to access better quality education.
Thank you.
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