As part of the WSIS Forum events, ITU organized the Action Line C4 session on capacity building, which took place on Monday, March 19th. This year our theme was “Building ICT skills for social entrepreneurs”. The session was attended by around 50 participants. It focused on how capacity building using ICTs supports the achievement of Sustainable Development Goal Number 4 (SDG 4) on ensuring inclusive and equitable quality education and promoting lifelong learning opportunities for all by 2030, and specifically target 4.4 which aims at an increase in the percentage number of youths and adults who have relevant skills including technical vocational skills, for employment, decent jobs and entrepreneurship. ICTs are used by entrepreneurs to develop innovative techniques aimed at solving social, cultural and environmental problems. These social entrepreneurs as they are currently called, create businesses aimed at generating a positive return to society, rather than profit. To achieve this, they require specific ICT skills to be able to generate appropriate innovations and remain relevant in their field. The session was conducted in the form of a panel discussion and was moderated by ITU.

The panel consisted of 5 speakers from: the International Labor Organization (ILO), three social enterprises (WeRobotics, Horyou, and Empowerment lab), and the Government of Mexico. The panelists looked at how capacity building promotes social entrepreneurship and what skills are required to create ICT solutions aimed at generating returns to society rather than profit. One of the main takeaways from the discussion was that the development of ICT skills is critical for the support of innovation and entrepreneurship. To this end, an overhaul of education policies is needed to include ICT and entrepreneurial training in school curriculum as early as primary school level. Moreover, education processes have to be re-organized to emphasize the role of peer-to-peer training. Education reforms and policy changes are only one part of the solution. In order to ensure the true success of the small enterprises today, accessibility costs have to be reduced, quality ensured, and employees equipped with both technical and soft skills. Most importantly, reducing the gap between the number of women and men in ICT-related occupations or SME can be achieved by introducing technical skills, such as programming and coding, to girls at an early age. This will increase their chances of creating ICT solutions in the future and establishing new enterprises on their own.