Closing the Skills Gap in the STEM area

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by Warner Dijkhuizen, CSR Manager IBM Benelux

Managing the challenges of youth unemployment and the growing skills gap are critical to every nation’s economy. But no single sector of any nation’s economy can overcome these problems by acting alone. Governments, employers, educators, communities and families must work together toward the common goal of connecting all people – young learners, young adults, workers, the elderly and persons with disabilities –to the promise of opportunity. Innovative approaches to education can help transform local, regional and national economies by providing access to early learning, connecting learning more directly to employment, and ensuring that each person has chances to learn.

IBM has taken the lead in addressing economic transformation and community development through education at every level – from modeling how employers can help shape school curricula to make them academically rigorous and economically relevant (P-TECH), to early childhood science and mathematics education (KidSmart), to innovations in literacy training for children and adults (Reading Companion), to monetary grants and online “kits” to enable and encourage skills-based educational volunteering (IBM Activity Kits; IBM Impact Grants), and finally to web-based educational and cognitive computing resources to improve the training and effectiveness of teachers (Teachers TryScience; IBM Watson). IBM’s innovations in education are helping to improve access to community, opportunity and prosperity for people around the world.

The first weekend in October the whole chain from education to businesses in Netherlands opened the doors and invited interested families to learn more about the ways STEM, Science Technology, Engineering and Math, was essential to their core business.  In Science Center NEMO over 7000 people visited and actively participated in science experiments and games, among which an IBM Robotics booth, where children set their first coding steps with creative and structured thinking by programming a LEGO robot. IBM volunteers were present to assist the families and talk about their daily work at IBM.

Through these innovative initiatives with our public and private-sector partners – and through the dedication and commitment of IBM volunteers, mentors and community educators around the world – we are helping to extend opportunities for education and employment to previously under-served populations as we close the skills gap and strengthen economic competitiveness.