It’s important to realise that education isn’t an area that can be dealt with through a single transaction, says Tae Yoo, head of Corporate Affairs at Cisco.

It is something that demands multi-year strategies and the development of replicable models. Davos has played a major part in delivering these.

At the World Economic Forum in 2003, John Chambers, Cisco’s president and CEO, put a stake in the ground on the issue of education. From the discussions that took place there, the Jordan Education Initiative was born, a venture that drew in public and private groups – companies, government groups and non-profit organisations. At the heart of the collaboration was how we could leverage the internet to transform education.

Similar initiatives have been launched in the Palestinian Territories as well as in the Indian state of Rajasthan.

Now, the jewel in the crown of our education projects is probably the Cisco Network Academy programme. Networking Academies have 458,843 students in 152 countries. There are more than 10,000 academies and 24,000 participating instructors. Academy instructors use online testing an average of 35,000 times daily, making the program one the largest e-learning initiatives in the world.
It’s important to realise that the World Economic Forum provided the base from which these projects developed. This year, John will be participating in another session, which will look at how we can further expand these programmes. There will also be several bilateral meetings behind the scenes, which will play an important part. Davos has only been open for a matter of hours, but from the discussions I’ve had so far there has been an encouraging sense that education will figure highly on this year’s agenda.

–Tae Yoo
head of Corporate Affairs at Cisco
Read her blog on The Times Online