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.