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Why This Project:
Hidaya Foundations' head quarter being in
Silicon Valley (Santa Clara/San Jose, California, USA) and most of its
Board of Directors, Volunteers and Donor Base coming from the
technological world, provided an opportunity for Hidaya Foundation to
initiate a project where underprivileged & unemployed software
engineering graduates can be trained and benefited so they may find jobs
successfully in their own discipline. It was observed that currently
approximately 80% software engineers do not find jobs in their own
discipline due to various reasons, the most prominent being the quality
and lack of confidence on graduates part.
What Has been Accomplished:
Hidaya initiated this project in January
2009 and trained over fifty (50) software engineers by end of the year.
Approximately 20% of the software engineers were hired at Hidaya for
training of future internees at Hidaya Institute of Science &
Technology (HIST) and for the in house development work for improving
Hidaya's internal processes. Additional 20% are continuing internship
at Hidaya Software House (HSH). During 2010 it is expected minimum of
one hundred and twenty five (125) software engineers will be benefiting
from this project.
Location of Current Training:
Currently, this internship is being
offered at one of the facility of Hidaya Institute of Science &
Technology (HIST) at Jamshoro, Pakistan, where Hidaya Trust, sister
organization of Hidaya Foundation has one of its district operation in
Pakistan. Jamshoro / Hyderabad is famous for offering a wide variety of
educational opportunities to National and International students.
Liaquat University of Medical Sciences (LUMS), University of Sindh,
Mehran University of Engineering and Technology, Isra University of
Medical and Science and Dr. Baqai Education City are on top from where
thousands of students complete their education every year.
Entrance Process:
Hidaya advertizes Software Engineering
Skills & Development project to community via various news papers
and list servers and by contacting 6 to 8 local universities. Once all
the resumes / CVs are received and evaluated for identifying the
graduates from the same field, candidates are given a computerized
written entry exam comprising their undergraduate coursework. All the
candidates who clear the exam are interviewed based on their interest in
the field. Final list of selected candidates is issued in December and
June for the January to June and July to December semesters
respectively.
Financial Assistance:
Financial assistance is given in the form
of stipend for their day to day living (including residence,
transportation, food and miscellaneous) and tuition assistance to cover
the cost of Hidaya Institute of Science & Technology (HIST)
tuition. Software engineers apply on an appropriate form for stipend
and tuition assistance. Interviews are conducted and varying degree of
financial assistance is provided based on candidates families economic
background and place of residence of their families.
Technologies Offered:
This project includes training of cutting
edge Microsoft and Open Source technologies. In Microsoft graduates
learn Dot.Net module including core C#.Net, ASP.Net 3.5/4.0, Basic &
Advenced ASP.Net, ASP. Net Security, IIS Configuration & Hosting,
Web Services, MySQL Server 2005, Rich Internet Applications Development
including AJAX, LINQ, Silver Light, XML. In Open Source technology
internees learn PHP, MySQL, Linux, CMS (Joomla), CSS, Java Script, HTML
and AJAX etc.
Hands on Development Work
While learning at Hidaya, interns get the
opportunity to work directly on various Hidaya in house development
projects such as internal paperless system, provide consultancy to
external customers (profit and non-profit organizations), deliver
training classes to underprivileged students at local schools and
colleges to increase their interest in software engineering and
information technology.
Career Development
Besides the software development, interns
at Hidaya may receive training classes for career development where
they discuss socio-economical issues, world wide software engineering
job markets, resume and cover letter writing skills, interviewing tips
and techniques, English language competency, project management skills
etc.
Placement Services:
Hidaya is also putting efforts to find
the ways for these internees to be transitioned to industry and software
development environments. Various software houses are being contacted
for placement purposes.
Future Plans:
Hidaya aims to boost this project and
expand it to world wide to a much larger scale where hundreds of such
graduates may benefit every year. Current HIST is considered as a
laboratory for future growth Insha Alla.
Last Update: March 02, 2010.
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