Accenture to Spend $100 Million on Skills Training

Is $100 million the new threshold for signaling you're serious about making a difference? Recently, it was Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg pledging that amount to the Newark school district. Now we learn that consulting giant Accenture will be spending 100 (very) big ones over the next three years on its Skills to Succeed program.

The goal of Accenture's program seems pretty straightforward: the company wants to equip 250,000 people around the world with the "skills that enable them to participate in and contribute to the economy and society." And to do it by 2015

A few examples of the type of work the Skills to Succeed program does—and will continue to do in order to meet its targets:

• • Building the skills of young entrepreneurs in Africa
• • Offering free skills training for the unemployed in Brazil
• • Training disadvantage young people in business process outsourcing and technology skills in India
• • Helping underprivileged students in the Philippines and Cambodia to develop IT skills
• • Training migrant groups in specialized technology skills in Spain
• • Helping disadvantaged young people to become entrepreneurs in the U.K.
• • Teaching business preparedness skills to students in community colleges and providing IT training for disadvantaged youth in the U.S.

In each of the endeavors, the company is working with partner organizations—some local and some international.

Now all we need are some jobs for that quarter-million people to fill!

--Phil Stott, Vault.com