The Cisco Networking Academy Program Brings Much more than Technical Skills into People's Lives
January 30, 2006
By Jason Deign, News@Cisco
Michele La Rosa of Cremona, Italy, is hoping the Cisco® Networking Academy® Program will help him change the world.
A former finance administrator who lost his job for failing to overcharge for a report and was later forced to drive a bus to support himself, La Rosa turned his life around due in part to the Networking Academy program and believes it can do the same for many others.
"When I lost my job I lost my confidence," he says, "I could not get back into employment so I went to Africa for six months as an international volunteer for Youth Action for Peace Italy and during that time I stayed three months in Kenya, working as an astronomy and IT teacher."
On his sojourn he met his future wife, the Kenya Voluntary Development Association worker who came to greet him off the plane.
He also found a reason for going back to Italy: to acquire the training and funds to help set up projects for children of underprivileged Kenyan communities.
"I wanted to help Kenya and realized I could do this with telecommunications skills. When I got back to Italy I could not get a job so I did a Cisco CCNA® course in June 2004. I knew the certification was the best in the industry."
The move paid off. One month before gaining his accreditation, La Rosa was offered a job in the IT department of Gardesa, a maker of security doors, shutters and systems. In his free time, he continued studying towards a Cisco CCNP® certification.
This, in turn, secured him work on one of Italy's largest IT projects, the creation of a digital TV network by BT, the UK telecommunications services provider, for Italian Prime Minister and media magnate Silvio Berlusconi.
Besides helping support his wife, who stayed in Africa to study Economics, the training and work experience gave La Rosa the confidence, contacts and cash to start working towards his grand plan of improving the fortunes of Kenyan children through the Networking Academy program.
His first step was to team up with Amani, a lay voluntary non-government organization inspired and founded by Father Renato Kizito Sesana, a Combonian missionary, which runs two emergency centers for street children in Nairobi, the Kenyan capital.
He then secured support from Europa Networking, the Regional Academy for Bergamo in Italy, for the project in Kenya and as a result one of the schools, known as Shalom IT Center recently became the first Local Academy in Kenya to be linked directly to a European Regional Academy.
Herbert Wamalwa, the Networking Academy program training manager in Nairobi, completed his instructor courses with La Rosa in the Regional Academy and the Local Academy is on track to launch its first course by May 2006.
While remarkable, La Rosa's story is far from unique in the Networking Academy program. In fact, perhaps one of the big attractions of the program for governments, learning institutions and students is that it seems to result in an inordinate number of life-changing experiences.
Another example is that of Radu Vasile, a blind Romanian Networking Academy program student who won an 'Against all Odds' prize in the Europe, Middle East and Africa Academy Conference 2005 Awards.
Despite his blindness, Vasile, a math expert who is due to graduate from university in 2006, achieved a top place in his CCNA and Java classes and is now on the way to becoming a Cisco Certified Academy Instructor, a role in which he aims to help others with disabilities.
Inspired and helped along by Marian Selea, a senior technical expert at Cisco who is also blind, Vasile is working on systems to enable those with visual impairments to read course materials more easily, creating a Romanian version of text-reading software.
In nearby Bulgaria, 22-year-old Vlady Gyurov has had a similarly life-changing experience since passing his CCNA certification. After being wheelchair-bound for three years, the award has given him the skills to take up a position in the Bulgarian Networking Academy team.
These feats pale in comparison to the daily tales of success coming out of other emerging markets.
Shahab Meshki, Cisco regional sales manager for East Africa, tells how one of the first students at the Networking Academy program in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, was a woman who had recently given birth.
"Her husband looked after the baby so she could go to classes in order to gain the skills that would allow her to go back to her home country of Rwanda to get a corporate job," he says.
The Rwandan and Ethiopian capitals are more than 1,300 kilometers apart. In a continent of poor roads and almost non-existent communications infrastructure, the woman's feat is a clear demonstration of just how far the Networking Academy program can take its students.
Jason Deign is a freelance journalist located in Barcelona, Spain.
