Tokyo, 29 June, /AJMEDIA/
A major Japanese staffing firm and a U.N. training institute agreed Wednesday to provide online information technology courses to Ukrainian women who fled their country in the wake of Russia’s military aggression.
Pasona Group Inc. CEO Yasuyuki Nambu and Nikhil Seth, the executive director of the United Nations Institute for Training and Research, signed a memorandum of understanding in Tokyo pledging that both parties will work toward providing economic independence to women, especially those who are marginalized.
Based on the agreement, Pasona intends to provide educational content that can be used by UNITAR in its plans to target some 500 Ukrainian women who have evacuated across the border to Poland.
Ukrainian Ambassador to Japan Sergiy Korsunsky, who attended the signing ceremony, hailed the agreement, saying, “Those vulnerable women now in Poland, they’re deprived of the opportunity to develop their personal skills.”
“So it (this agreement) is very important to support them,” Korsunsky told reporters.
Due to the war in Ukraine, 994,775 refugees from the Eastern European country, including children and women, are located in Poland as of June 13, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.
Although the two entities will discuss details further, a Pasona spokeswoman said introductory courses explaining the background of the digital domain are expected to be offered from September through March 2024.
According to the memorandum, Pasona and UNITAR will also jointly make training programs available to some 5,000 women and youths in countries in sub-Saharan Africa.
UNITAR is seeking to equip women with digital skills, including giving them the ability to code and develop machine learning infrastructure, to expand women’s areas of expertise and narrow the wage and skills disparity between the genders, according to a UNITAR official.
The organization was established in 1963 as a training institute of the United Nations. It provides learning opportunities for governments and private companies, mainly in developing countries, to overcome global challenges.
