World ORT and Hewlett-Packard are more than doubling the size of their partnership in the Graduate Entrepreneurship Training through IT programme (GET-IT) with the opening of 10 new training centres in Russia and Ukraine.

Professionals from the new centres in Moscow, Tula, Kineshma, Rybinsk, Saransk, Murmansk, Slavutich, Kiev and Lviv will be brought together in Tula for training over the summer. Once these new centres are operational, World ORT will be involved in half of the GET-IT centres situated in Russia, Ukraine, Azerbaijan, Belarus and Kazakhstan.

"This is further confirmation of World ORT's status as HP's principal partner in delivering social programming in the Former Soviet Union," said Dr Sergey Gorinskiy, Deputy Director of the World ORT Representative Office in Moscow. "It is a great vote of confidence in ORT that this major international company wants to continue to build its partnership with us to the benefit of the citizens and economies of countries in the region."

The GET-IT programme focuses on the need to encourage job creation and entrepreneurship among people below the age of 25. Its training courses deal with practical IT solutions for daily business challenges faced in areas such as finance, human resources, marketing, communications and technology management.

The expansion has World ORT's and HP's GET-IT partnership has been under discussion for many months.

"It's a big challenge for our management team," Dr Gorinskiy said. "There are many cultural, management and administrative hurdles that Western companies need to jump before they can operate successfully in Russia and we work very hard to help HP negotiate them. Also, as a large NGO with a lot of international experience, we believe it is our mission to help the smaller, grass roots NGOs with which we work to be able to implement major programmes like this efficiently."

World ORT Director General and CEO Robert Singer said the benefits of the partnership with HP could not be overestimated.

"This is an on-going success story," Mr Singer said. "It has proved to be a win-win for both World ORT and HP and has opened up tremendous opportunities for thousands of people around the world."

News of the partnership expansion comes just six months after ORT won a prize at the HP GET-IT Annual Conference in Brussels for the project it has implemented at its existing six centres in Moscow, Ekaterinburg, Tambov, Volgograd and Tula - Breaking the Digital Divide: Business and IT Skills for Underserved Population Groups.

This programme has been particularly useful in helping women and deaf and hard-of-hearing students and will be the model for four of the new centres which cater for these population groups.

"The project mission is to create new opportunities in the modern, knowledge-based economy for our trainees - not all of whom are deaf or women - by providing them with the skills necessary to pursue a career in IT-based business," Dr Gorinskiy said.

In addition to developing specialised techniques for students belonging to the target population groups, Breaking the Digital Divide also aims to integrate GET-IT approaches to existing training programmes to help unemployed people and graduates acquire the business and IT skills they need to launch a career or their own business.

It is this model which will be implemented in four of the new centres, which focus on these populations groups. However, ORT will be exploring new models in the other centres.

"We will begin new dimensions in our work," Dr Gorinskiy said. "Russia is famous for its scientists but we are weak on our innovation in business. So we will be teaching our students not only how to design something, for example, but also how to use it to start or develop a business."

The new models are expected to be particularly productive in the centres being set up at the Moscow International Higher Business School and the Moscow Secondary School 1257.

Hewlett-Packard places a premium on the GET-IT programme's potential to plant the seeds of economic growth and social progress.

"HP believes that entrepreneurship is vital for the economy and that young people can play a major role in creating their own businesses and their own jobs," said Gabriele Zedlmayer, vice president of Corporate Marketing and Global Citizenship, HP Europe, Middle East and Africa. "The GET-IT trainings combine entrepreneurship education with practical hands-on experience in using IT to enhance young people's professional skills."