China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) is bringing lot of Economic & Development hopes for Pakistan specially for traditional Un-Served areas along entire Route of CPEC. This is NOT ONLY ROAD, but a Window of unlimited opportunities for Pakistan especially due to High Bandwidth Internet Cable alongside the entire Route. This ‘ Virtual Road ‘ would be a Gate Way for entire Europe & Central Asian
States. We as a Nation can get the benefits of this OPPORTUNITY only when we build the capacity of Local Population along the entire route to absorb this change for their economic benefits and welcome the Social Change with Positivity. Our Current Education System is not demand driven (Even for domestic Markets) Moreover during past few years there have been plenty of Training opportunities in Traditional Vocational skills for the women and Youth workers especially living in the remote areas. No of national and international NGO’s, Federal/Provincial Governments and commercial organizations have invested a lot in building the capacities and putting in place the right infra-structure like Vocational Centers to build the capacities of workers to produce local and customized products covering no of trades. But there has been no focus on setting up Resource Centers for sales and marketing of these products. Women were not trained to developed their own businesses. More over during last fifty years we have established ‘ Job Oriented ‘ opportunities where everyone is looking for a JOB where he/she can get fixed monthly salary not based on performance but being position holder of a defined appointment. This system could not create innovation and entrepreneurship in the entire process. This resulted in a situation in which the workers were blocked in traditional cycle of making the local traditional products and waiting for sales, got disappointed and left it. They were never exposed to new opportunities and market driven needs at national and international level. The above scenario was also adversely effected due to absence of enabling environment for the entrepreneur and forward looking Women and Youth in Pakistan. While we observe fast growing business development opportunities in POST CPEC Era, our traditional existing systems needs to be supplemented through joint efforts of Government, Universities / Collages / schools , Local Communities ( NGOs/ CSOs ), Chambers, Women Organizations like SEWA etc Information and communication technologies (ICT’s) are offering number of solutions and services to fill the above gaps and to enable the grass root level workers in getting the required trainings, making the production systematic based on market demand, establish linkages with micro financial organizations and other business supporting organizations along with establishing linkages with local and international markets to sell their products at reasonable rates by eliminating the middle men. Project E-CPEC has been conceived and designed by Center of Information Technology ( CIT ) Islamabad which aims to address all the above issues with a holistic approach covering all the required components to produce a coherent and gradually incrementing modular progress path for the entrepreneur women / Youth living in areas alongside the entire route of CPEC. This Project aims to :-
• Establish ‘ Digital Hubs ‘ along entire rout of CPEC.
• Bridge the Gaps between Demand Driven Human Resource Development due to infrastructure of CPEC and existing situation.
• Establish ICT based linkages in Health, Education, Agriculture, Tourism, Trade, Solar sectors ( Solar Bibi & Solar Chacha ).
• Link Grass Root level Home Based workers with Local / National / International level Entrepreneurs. ( Project E-Shop )
• ICTs based linkages between Chambers & Home Based Workers.
• Create Social Harmony and tolerance for each other between different Segments of Society at UC Level.
• Provide technology support to Government initiatives along CPEC Route.
