Wadhwani Foundation Educational Technology ICT Delivery Pilot Opportunity

The Wadhwani Foundation was founded by Dr. Romesh Wadhwani, a Silicon Valley entrepreneur and businessman. We have been working on a series of initiatives in India for the past decade, including the National Entrepreneurship Network and the Skills Development Network. This year, we have launched our first major U.S. initiative entitled, Race to a Job. We will enhance online courses in American community colleges in career and technical education, by leveraging new kinds of technology such as gaming and simulation.

We are about to launch a pilot this fall with a group of community colleges from around the country and a subsequent larger pilot in the spring of 2014 with other major U.S. foundations to test these new technologies with cohorts of students. Our ultimate goal is to increase job placements and to help fill the skills gap in the United States. We are interested in occupational programs such as health care, IT, manufacturing and automotive repair. In the area of ICT, we are looking at occupational programs such as computer support specialist and networking engineer.

We invite you to submit a RFP (attached). We will launch our first pilot this fall and our second pilot next spring. Our goal is to create hybrid online courses in a more standardized, nationally scalable and portable manner. Each pilot will last 4-6 months. We will fund a portion of the technology enhancements, will provide our project manager, our technology partners and will explore co-funding opportunities as well with other major foundations. Our foundation will work with employers and trade associations in this initiative as well. We would like to request a meeting with you to discuss potential participation in one of our upcoming pilots. Please find attached our:

• RFI,
• RFP, and
• presentation.  

Thank you.

Rishi Chopra

Program Coordinator-Skill Development Network

Wadhwani Foundation

2475 Hanover Street, Palo Alto CA 94304 USA

Office Phone: 650-935-9532