COMING, HP Preferred Gold Partner from Belgrade, Serbia, held its first course for end-users as part of its donations program.

COMING - Computer Engineering is a leading data center infrastructure and systems integration company in Serbia and the Southeast European region. As a company with the highest level of expertise in leading technology solutions, COMING also organizes trainings and workshops adapted to the needs of their clients.

COMING joined the MAP network in March this year. The official opening of the MAP Center in Belgrade was followed by a press conference, whose honorary guest was the Deputy Prime Minister Bozidar Djelic, HP Regional Manager Franz Scherz, COMING Computer Engineering Director, Drago Samardzic, as well as MEA-I Regional Manager Slobodan Radic. The opening ceremony was followed by a 5-day Training of Trainers, in which 15 MAP trainers from Serbia were certified.

The COMING MAP Center has now organized and completed its first course for end users. The first course, organized in cooperation with the Serbian Employment Bureau, was donated to the first group of end users.  The participants followed a five-day course during which they had the opportunity to learn the basics of using a computer within finance, operations, communications and marketing. The participants came from different educational backgrounds but they all had the opportunity to upgrade their existing skills and learn new things in the field of information technology. The feedback from the fifteen participants was extremely positive! They responded positively to the course, and were pleased with its dynamism and interactivity.

The COMING MAP Center plans to hold another course for end users in the coming weeks in order to extend the reach of the MAP Program and its benefits to the local community.

              

MEA-I delivered a MAP Training of Trainers course for 8 trainers from UNITAR in Geneva this July.

UNITAR is an autonomous body within the United Nations system that is dedicated to developing the capacities of people around the world. In the last few yeras, UNITAR started focusing especially on adult training and professional learning, on monitoring and evaluating the impacts of such capacity building, and on capitalizing on capacity development.

MAP was therefore a natural fit for UNITAR, and for the UNITAR trainers from Nigeria who attended the course.

The training was held at HP Headquarters from  June 28 till July 2, 2010. The training was provided by Munir Ahmad, Master Trainer from MEA-I who said: “This training was very dynamic. The participants were very enthusiastic and participative which made things even more interesting. The participants were very skilled, not only from the technical side, but also from the human side, which is very important when you get to the field and start working with underserved communities.”

The UNITAR Trainers were trained on the MAP curriculum, which has proved to be very inspirational. According to one participant: “This was the best training that I had in my whole career. This will change my life and the life of many more.”