Sunday, August 3, 2025
HomeHealthcareFrom classroom to profession: Ghana's new gateway to tech success

From classroom to profession: Ghana’s new gateway to tech success

At Cisco, we care deeply about innovation and sensible effectiveness. When responding to social challenges, we need to be a part of options that work—and that usually means drawing nimbly, as one Cisco, from our total organizational toolset, no matter division or area inside the firm.

By listening to our nonprofit collaborators after which choosing from our suite of confirmed interventions as we assemble a personalized assist bundle, we will empower our social affect companions to assist extra individuals, extra effectively, in a extra sustainable method. We search for measurable outcomes, and we like to see our grantees utilizing know-how to alter extra lives for the higher.

Uplifting communities via digital skilling

The Chorkor Digital Lab, a undertaking run by Cisco social affect companion BASICS Worldwideexemplifies our integrative and results-oriented strategy. BASICS supplies training, meals, and healthcare for kids in the neighborhood of Chorkor and surrounding areas in Ghana, West Africa—serving to total communities rise out of poverty. Their new lab is making ready previously underserved college students for dynamic careers in cybersecurity, networking, and extra. Supported by Cisco Networking Academy in addition to our Know-how Grant Programthe lab affords a hub for studying, collaboration, and creativity, the place college students be taught cutting-edge expertise that may assist them flourish within the digital economic system.

Find out how college students in Ghana put together for thrilling tech careers on the Chorkor Digital Lab.

BASICS Worldwide CEO and founder Patricia Wilkins notes that Chorkor’s repute as exhausting to assist was precisely what impressed her to dive in and start unlocking the potential of the neighborhood. “We all the time felt we wanted to offer kids entry to know-how,” she mentioned. “After we realized about Cisco’s program, the place they meet college students the place they’re, and provides them the technical expertise and laptop expertise that they want, we obtained on board.”

Sharing Cisco’s trusted curriculum and know-how

Wilkins additionally manages the BASICS Cisco Academy, making certain that college students get full entry to Cisco’s trusted curriculum as they work in the direction of the certifications that may unlock higher jobs and futures upon commencement. Cisco Networking Academy is a world, IT skills-to-jobs program, providing digital expertise coaching to arrange college students for industry-standard certifications and careers in networking, cybersecurity, and associated fields.

“For over 20 years, BASICS Worldwide has believed in supporting the entire baby—combining training, diet, mentorship, and life expertise to assist younger individuals thrive and lead change of their communities.” —Patricia Wilkins, CEO and founder, BASICS Worldwide

Chorkor Digital Lab students working on desktop computers.Chorkor Digital Lab students working on desktop computers.
College students studying new technical expertise within the Chorkor Digital Lab.

Cisco’s Know-how Grant Program supplies our personal know-how to qualifying nonprofit organizations to assist them notice vital beneficial properties in productiveness, safety, scalability, and value effectivity. For the Chorkor Lab, a Know-how Grant was instrumental in laying the groundwork for the Networking Academy.

Patrick Verret, who managed the know-how grant, explains, “We helped them set up a safe and steady community for college students to entry Cisco Networking Academy, make the most of different on-line studying supplies, and collaborate with others throughout the web. Due to our Meraki firewalls, switches, and entry factors, college students can hook up with the community all through the constructing, by way of each wired and wi-fi connections.”

Dreaming of—and dealing in the direction of—careers in tech

Already, the Lab is altering lives. “I needed to do laptop science, however I couldn’t get an opportunity to do it, as a result of the charges that it’s a must to pay are very excessive. It has been my dream for therefore lengthy,” mentioned scholar Joyce Banahene, who’s aiming to seek out work as a community engineer when she completes her certification.

Additionally feeling impressed, scholar Pleasure Adevu famous, “I’ll be working in any tech firm. Most likely Cisco, Apple, Samsung—any of them!”

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