CAIRO: Ask any executive in any field about the one skill that the local workforce market desperately needs and the answer will be management. Realizing this, Boeing chose this skill as the focus of it first training and educational project in the Middle East, which celebrated the graduation of 30 students this week. In cooperation with the America-Mideast Education and Training Services (AMIDEAST), the Boeing Project Management Scholarship Program started earlier this year, attracting engineers with different backgrounds. John Craig, Boeing's Middle East vice president of international relations, explains that the company wanted to improve the capabilities of engineers of all types. Craig says that the company s realization that it has to be a good corporate citizen, following the expansion of its work in the Middle East, was the reason behind this scholarship program. Besides opening an office in Dubai for regional operations, the company has just sold 12 airplanes of the newest generation, 737-800, to EgyptAir, and there are several deals across the region. Due to the company s interest in being involved in the future of the regional economy, investing in the betterment of human resources was the company s way of contributing to the economy. He explains that, like the company s policy in the United States office, the most valuable commodity is the employee and the employee's motivation. The program resonated with many engineers as over 270 applied. Through a multi-stage selection process, the applicants were narrowed down to 30. With two simultaneous programs, The Project Management Professional (PMP) and Certified Associate of Project Management (CAPM), experience and background criteria differed. The selected applicants varied from those who wanted to switch careers, those who assumed managerial positions following a technical background, and those who had their eyes set on such managerial positions. For Amr El Desouki, a computer engineer and a project leader in IBM, his promotion to a managerial position made the search for a project management program inevitable. The need to enroll in such programs isn t about pressure from employers or corporations, says Jihan El Sherif, a business unit manager and the only female graduate. She explains that management skills are vital in today s market and thus employees seek them for their own betterment and career advancement. Motassem Farouk, an aviation engineer and a graduate of the program, notes that taking such courses helps raise the competence and profitability of managers and consequently their respective companies in the market. The certification is recognized worldwide, says Stephen Hanchey, Amideast Egypt country director. The collaboration of Boeing and Amideast made the program even more appealing; some of the graduates say they had applied to other similarly-themed programs before this one was announced. When they had to make the choice they favored the Boeing Amideast program. Others noticed the significant difference between this program and others they have attended. El Sherif says that the Boeing sponsorship strengthened the program and ensured that more professional instructors were on board. She also points to the longer duration of the program; she has been in 40-hour programs but this one consisted of a lengthy144 hours. These graduates, adds Hanchey, don t need help finding jobs. Being in a mobile field and with such qualifications, Hanchey says they would be in new jobs within the next year or two. Craig promised more similar projects from Boeing in the near future, but not necessarily another PMP scholarship. This is the first project Boeing completed in the Middle East as a corporate citizen. It s currently involved in Jordan s King Abdullah s Knowledge Station, in which companies would provide computer training to remote villages.
