THE Ministry of Human Services and Social Security on Thursday launched a partnership with the online learning platform, Coursera, which will expand training courses to participants of the Women’s Innovation and Investment Network (WIIN) programme.

The launch was held at the Ministry of Human Services and Social Security and subject minister Dr Vindhya Persaud noted that there is no barrier or academic prerequisite to entering the programmes that will be undertaken.

According to the minister, the WIIN programme was successful last year, and this year the ministry has received over 10,000 applications. Here, she said, is where Coursera came in and the partnership was birthed.

“In a very cost-effective way we will be able to train 1,500 plus persons monthly; that’s a significant achievement where we are now able to multiply significantly the number of persons,” Dr Persaud said.

She added that the ministry hopes that by the end of March 2023, it will be able to cater for all the 10,000 applications on file for the persons who are interested in the WIIN programme.

Senior Adviser for Global Partnership at Coursera, Chad Pasha, said the courses being offered were carefully selected for the participants.

“Coursera’s content was carefully curated to very much complement what already exists at WIIN and with the ministry pairing their best existing content with ours into distinct learning tracks that provide courses, hands-on, short guided projects and recently our library of over 150,000 5-minute video clips on all topics,” he said.

Pasha added that this combination of stackable, yet hands-on deep training is being put into a collection of learning pathways together with the team at WIIN.

Minister Persaud noted that the courses can be done offline, online and in the participants’ own time and added that they will be much richer for the experience gained throughout the programme.

In total, the programme costs some $50 million for its one-year duration.

The programme she said will continue to next year and persons who are unable to take advantage of the opportunity this year will have access in the following year.

“We are working on a bigger vision and that is narrowing the gender gap. This is the digital experience where we narrow the digital divide, this is working on gender inequality, this is working on so many important things in our world today,” Dr Persaud said.