GWIT Overview
GWIT Purpose
Under an IQC for Workforce Development activities, GWIT provides expertise and support to USAID Missions, Bureaus and other operating units in developing sound workforce development systems that support economic growth and poverty reduction and increase countries’ competitiveness in the global marketplace.
GWIT Can Help Achieve USAID Missions’ Strategic Objectives
The skills and capacity of a workforce either support or hinder economic growth and competitiveness in countries. If your country strategy focuses on economic growth in a globally competitive marketplace and is concerned about un- and under-employment, consider using the GWIT mechanism to help identify industries and service sectors with the greatest growth and employment potential. GWIT helps create sustainable workforce development systems that produce adaptable workforces with a rich mix of knowledge and skills that enable countries to add value to and benefit from the free flow of capital, information and technology that characterize the global economy.
GWIT helps address the following concerns:
- Is high youth unemployment prevalent in your country? GWIT provides assistance in identifying key ways to improve systems to link skill development with income generation and employment.
- Does your country’s workforce have the knowledge and skills needed to accelerate economic growth, trade and competitiveness? GWIT focuses on ways of facilitating public-private partnerships to increase productivity and support cluster-based development.
- Is HIV/AIDS decimating the labor force? GWIT can help develop strategies for meeting critical workforce needs in countries impacted by HIV/AIDS and other major health threats.
- Is your country emerging from conflict? GWIT has strategies that address the unique workforce development needs of countries rebuilding their economies after war.
- Is there a need to promote entrepreneurship and build capacity of micro, small and medium sized firms? GWIT has the capacity to help develop self-sustaining workforce development systems that contribute to job creation and poverty reduction.
- Does the education and training system prepare graduates adequately for the demands of the global market place? GWIT can improve the responsiveness of the formal education system at the basic, secondary and postsecondary levels and the more informal skills development system including e-learning providers.
Assistance Available
GWIT staff members are ready to work collaboratively with USAID Missions to:
- Provide a rapid appraisal of needs and options for increasing workforce competitiveness;
- Help foster and build countries' and regions' capacity to sustain public-private sector stakeholder collaboration for addressing workforce development priorities;
- Analyze the skills needed to help industry clusters produce more value-added products and services;
- Assist host country governments, PVO’s, NGO’s, trade unions and education institutions to assess, design, implement and evaluate workforce development programs;
- Increase host country capacity to develop and implement their own sustainable strategies for workforce development;
- Improve education and skill development policy and reform efforts to produce a skilled citizenry;
- Help stakeholders benchmark best practices that have worked around the world;
- Facilitate access to technology-based on-demand learning and employment opportunities; and
- Broker new partnerships between host country governments and private organizations, and their US counterparts, such as trade associations, technical and community colleges, professional organizations and NGO’s.
Core GWIT Partner Organizations
GWIT has six Core Partners with expertise in all major aspects of Workforce Development. These include:
Prime Contractor Education Development Center, Inc. (EDC)
Associates for International Resources and Development (AIRD)
Development Informatics, Inc. (DI)
Opportunities Industrialization Centers International, Inc. (OICI)
Regional Technology Strategies, Inc. (RTS)
Research Triangle Institute (RTI)
How to use GWIT Services
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Draft your scope of work, ensuring that your objectives align with the general purposes of GWIT.
GWIT Purposes: The goal of this contract is to assist USAID Missions, Bureaus and other operating units in building the capacity of developing, transition, and crisis countries to create dynamic, self-sustaining, self-improving, and self-governing participatory workforce development systems that assure a country's or region's ongoing place in the global economy.
Activities include:
a) Providing technical assistance and expertise to USAID Missions, Bureaus and other operating units to enhance the productive capacity of populations by increasing skills that match market demand;
b) Fostering public private collaboration in addressing workforce challenges;
c) Advocating policies and programs that increase the capacity of public and private education and training providers to deliver relevant skills training; and d) Informing education and skill development policy and operational reform.
- Share the draft Scope of Work of the task order with your contracting officer (CO) and the GWIT technical officer (CTO), Claire Ignatowski (cignatowski@usaid.gov). The CTO must confirm to you and your CO that your objectives are consistent with those of GWIT.
- Discuss any adjustments with your CO that need to be negotiated with the GWIT contractor, EDC. Please contact Elizabeth Markovic, Project Manager at: emarkovic@edc.org phone: 202-572-3776 or Gustavo Payan, Project Coordinator at: gpayan@edc.org phone: 617-618-2448
- Your CO issues a delivery order request to EDC.
- EDC responds with a task order proposal for your Scope of Work.
- Your CO negotiates the delivery order with EDC Contract Officer, Ken Repp, (krepp@edc.org) or phone: 617-618-2251. A copy of the delivery order is forwarded to CTO.
- EDC fields the team and completes your work.
How to Use GWIT Services
GWIT Brochure
