GWIT Capabilities
GWIT Core Partner Organizations
GWIT has six Core Partners with expertise in all major aspects of Workforce Development. They include:
Prime Contractor: Education Development Center, Inc.
Associates for International Resources and Development
Booz Allen Hamilton, Inc.
Development Informatics, Inc.
Opportunities Industrialization Centers International, Inc.
Regional Technology Strategies
Research Triangle Institute
Prime Contractor, Education Development Center, Inc. (EDC)
http://www.edc.org
EDC is a non-profit applied research organization with an overall
staff of more than 600 employees and an annual budget nearing $85
million. For over forty years, EDC has carried out projects in over
100 countries in all parts of the world on behalf of USAID and numerous
other donors. EDC began workforce development activities for USAID
in 1963, helping to establish the India Institute of Technology, Kanpur
and strengthen Kabul University’s College of Engineering. Since
that time, EDC has undertaken a wide range of workforce development
projects in more than twenty-five countries. A representative list
of EDC workforce development activities includes the following:
- Analysis of the training needs of specific industries in numerous countries, as varied as light manufacturing in Costa Rica and broadcast management in Francophone Africa, and the design and implementation of appropriate training programs.
- Training programs for disadvantaged populations, such as displaced homemakers.
- Focused labor market needs analysis, such as an assessment of the need for healthcare providers in the Eastern Caribbean and an analysis of the available capacity and alternative approaches to meet those needs.
- Integrated education and training programs, such as numerous “school-to-work” efforts launched in the United States as public-private partnerships.
- National-level workforce-focused curriculum reform efforts to meet the needs of countries such as Jamaica and Mali, where students may leave school before completion of formal education.
- Studies of the match or mismatch between employers’ needs, the skills and employability of university graduates, and program efficiency, as in the Yemen University Training Project.
- Use of educational technology to develop or enhance national capacity to upgrade employees’ levels of skills, as with the Philippines Department of Health Multimedia Training Project.
- Collaborative efforts among educators, industry, and labor to devise and establish national skills standards, such as EDC has done for several industries on behalf of the U.S. Department of Labor.
- Applied research into improving the effectiveness of formal and non-formal “on-the-job” training such as the “Nine Windows on Quality” program for healthcare workers in Venezuela.
- Strategic planning to address the training needs of specific sectors, such as public works in the Botswana Roads Training Project.
- Participatory national planning by key stakeholders for prospective labor force needs, as in Kyrgyzstan (Asian Development Bank Kyrgyzstan Workforce Development Project).
- Case studies of effective economic development partnerships conducted for the Inter-American Foundation.
- Worldwide studies of education and training needs, conducted for the United Nations Development Programme.
- Organization of the 2002 Youth Employment Summit to develop and disseminate workforce preparation strategies globally, collaboratively funded by USAID, the ILO, OECD, and numerous other donors.
- Global studies of the effectiveness of various types of training programs, combined with “best practices” guides, prepared for USAID’s Global Bureau, Human Capacity Development Center.
EDC also has had extensive experience managing large multi-country USAID IQC projects, and has established effective procedures for responding to and managing IQC task order requests.
Associates for International Resources and Development (AIRD)
AIRD is a Cambridge, Massachusetts-based small business, founded in 1980 by its president J. Dirck Stryker. The research and consulting firm has provided policy-relevant economic and workforce analysis to USAID and other international development donors. AIRD is quite familiar with USAID through its leadership of the EAGER (Equity and Growth through Economic Research) cooperative agreement, undertaken from 1995 to 2000 with the Africa Bureau, and its participation in a number of Indefinite Quantity Contracts such as the Global Bureau’s Support for Economic Growth and Institutional Reform/General Business, Trade and Investment (SEGIR/GBTI)and the Consulting Assistance for Economic Reform (CAER) IQC’s, as well as the Evaluation IQC with USAID’s Program and Policy Coordination Bureau, and other IQC’s in the areas of agribusiness and agricultural policy. AIRD has also undertaken numerous assignments for other clients, including the World Bank, OECD, the Inter-American Development Bank, host country governments and private trade associations.
AIRD’s staff provide technical assistance and training on “macro” -level economic analyses, broad-based and sector-specific trade and business development strategy, and workforce situation studies throughout North and sub-Saharan Africa, in Mexico and the Caribbean, in Macedonia and Romania, and in a number of countries in Asia. The firm is particularly known for its work on trade policy and trade capacity building, on which it is presently working at the national (Mali, Morocco) and regional (West Africa) levels for USAID and the multilateral Integrated Framework.
AIRD also specializes in cluster competitiveness analysis. AIRD analysts apply a “sectors” paradigm to organize analyses of market conditions affecting input and factor suppliers, producers, processors, wholesalers, retailers, as well as policy environments and market trends at local, national, regional, and global levels. AIRD founding staff collaborated in the late 1970s and early 1980s with the World Bank in its earliest versions of “comparative advantage” and sector policy adjustment reform analyses of agricultural commodity markets. Today, AIRD undertakes cluster competitiveness analysis in areas as diverse as regional electricity generation and distribution (West Africa), broiler agribusiness development (Morocco), and textiles, clothing, leather, and handicrafts (South Africa, Mali, Viet Nam).
AIRD’s efforts in workforce related areas include: an assessment of the impact of globalization on workers in labor-intensive manufacturing sectors and the need for consensus regarding global labor codes, analysis of factors determining labor productivity and employment, organization and delivery of sector-specific training programs (e.g., electricity, textiles), and the development of diagnostic frameworks for poverty reduction analysis and programs.
Booz Allen Hamilton, Inc. (BAH)
http://www.boozallen.com/
Booz Allen Hamilton, Inc., established in 1914, is one of the largest
and most successful international management and technology consulting
firms serving government and private sector clients. Booz Allen has
more than 100 offices in Europe, Asia, Africa, Australia, and North
and South America, including USAID project offices in Egypt, Macedonia,
Serbia, Croatia, and Hungary. Booz Allen has approximately 10,000
staff and annual sales approaching $2 billion. It provides expert
management consulting, workforce planning, training, strategic planning,
business process reengineering, and leading-edge information technology
support to clients, including most of the world's largest industrial
companies and financial services firms, and major institutions and
government bodies across the globe. Function-based practices spearhead
Booz Allen's work in training, strategy, operations, information technology
management, marketing, and market research. Cross-cutting issues,
such as policy development, strategic planning, and sector strategies,
are essential components of industry-based practices. Booz Allen can
mobilize appropriate staff from its spectrum of practice areas to
address the needs of the Global Workforce in Transition Project.
Development Informatics, Inc. (DI)
http://www.devinform.com/
DI is a small business that offers leading-edge strategic thinking
and technologies for fulfillment of human and economic potentials
in emerging economies. DI clients include national governments, multilateral
banks, development assistance agencies and other public, private and
non-governmental development institutions. DI’s work harnesses
the power of the information revolution for specific development initiatives,
using opportunities created by the Internet and other information
technologies to accelerate skills diffusion and international economic
growth.
DI provides consulting in the information technology component of traditional development projects and in the design and implementation of projects whose focus is information technology. It regularly offers workshops at the very “hands-on” level for practitioners and at the strategic level for private and public leaders. In addition, DI has created a number of products and services that help its clientele to:
- Revamp strategies and restructure their operations in light of past record of performance and budget cutbacks;
- Apply technologies and approaches to improve performance with the use of fewer resources;
- Incorporate informatics’ technology components to existing traditional projects on infrastructure, agriculture, health, education, privatization and economic reform packages.
Of relevance to a number of GWIT themes, – e.g., IT and communications technology, training, team-building, strategic planning, and “cluster coaching” – is the IT Cluster Workforce Development Initiative now underway in Egypt. In this ongoing USAID-assisted project, DI is helping to create linkages between universities, entrepreneurs, and IT industry associations. Activities include preparation of a web portal to be hosted by Egyptian universities that will promote work/study, internship, and outsourcing opportunities within the Egyptian IT cluster and its counterparts internationally.
Opportunities Industrialization Centers International, Inc. (OIC)
http://www.oicinternational.org/
OIC was founded by Rev. Leon H. Sullivan in Philadelphia, PA in 1964.
OIC’s mission, then as now, is to establish sustainable institutions
that provide skill training appropriate to the needs of the community.
All OIC programs work closely with governments, business, industry
and local human resource development organizations. Over seventy-five
OIC institutions currently exist throughout the United States. These
programs offer a variety of services ranging from computer technology,
to vocational/technical skills, to hospitality services, to training
former drug addicts to reenter society as constructive workers. The
OIC of America resources and experience have proven to be important
assets and resources for the development of OIC’s international
services. Functional and supportive linkages have been established
between OIC programs in America and those established in Africa, Eastern
Europe (Poland), Asia (Philippines) and Central America (Belize).
In 1969, OIC International was founded in response to a request by interested Nigerians concerned about growing unemployment among the disadvantaged segment of the population and the lack of continuity between training and employer needs in their country. Now, three decades later, OICI has 46 affiliate centers in 18 countries, primarily in Africa. The OIC Poland Micro-Enterprise and Workforce Development Program and the Philippines Rural Development Program are two examples of OICI non-Africa expertise.
OIC programs are committed to the philosophy of self-help and placing responsibility for workforce development in the hands of the local community. OICI’s proven process involves the creation of local Boards of Directors and advisory groups composed of representatives from the industrial sector, service organizations, training institutions and government. These groups meet regularly to ensure that curriculum is relevant to the development needs of the country. Local programs then provide non-formal training and assist program graduates with follow-up employment services. About fifty percent of OIC technical graduates are placed in jobs in business, industry and government civil service positions. In many cases, graduates also receive micro-enterprise training, become self-employed and work to create new jobs and small enterprises. This is a growing trend in developing nations and has contributed significantly to increased productivity and economic growth.
Regional Technology Strategies, Inc. (RTS)
http://www.rtsinc.org/
RTS assists government agencies, foundations, and other organizations
in formulating, implementing, and evaluating innovative regional workforce
and economic development strategies. RTS has special expertise and
considerable experience in strengthening roles for vocational and
technical colleges in regional development, business and institutional
collaboration, strategies based on regional innovation and production
systems, or clusters, and entrepreneurial education. It established
and manages an international alliance of technical colleges called
the Trans-Atlantic Technology and Training Alliance (TA3) that are
dedicated to learning, innovation, and joint problem solving. Its
resources include a vast collection of international benchmark practices
in workforce and entrepreneurial programs that impact regional development
that have been accumulated through grants from various national and
state agencies (see http://www.rtsinc.org/benchmark)
and access to an international array of experts through its TA3 connections
and project partners. Its international experience includes projects
to analyze a cluster in Azerbaijan, develop a training center for
IT in the Palestinian Territory, and develop entrepreneurial programs
with South Africa Technikons and in Objective One and Two regions
of the European Union. Its US work has concentrated on assessing and
designing workforce development policies and programs in the nation’s
most distressed regions such as the Mississippi Delta and Appalachia.
Research Triangle Institute (RTI )
RTI is an independent, nonprofit corporation with a distinguished history in scientific research and technology development. All activities are guided by RTI's mission: To improve the human condition through objective, innovative, multidisciplinary research, development, and technical services, setting the standard for scientific and professional excellence. RTI serves clients in government, industry, academia, and public service throughout the United States and abroad. It maintains headquarters in Research Triangle Park, NC, and has 10 satellite offices throughout the U.S. and overseas.
RTI employs a worldwide staff of more than 2,200 people, representing
a diverse set of technical capabilities. Frequently, these capabilities
are extended through collaboration with U.S. and international universities.
RTI scientists design, develop, and apply advanced tools and methods
in 5 major fields of research-
Health: Offering clients a spectrum of innovative services that encompass
drug discovery and development, outcomes research, product valuation,
public health, and health policy research
Environment and Natural Resources: Setting environmental standards,
conducting research, and providing scientific, technical, and policy
analysis
Education and Training: Improving the quality of education programs
in the U.S. and other countries through research, program evaluation,
training, and policy analysis
Advanced Technology: Bringing innovative ideas from the laboratory
and into practical use and providing intellectual asset management
services
Economic and Social Development: Building human institutional capacity
and promoting sustainable economic and social development throughout
the world
