Rwandan School Plans to Make Hostesses With the Most(esses)
As TED lent out the know-how and raw materials for local and regional versions of its conference to be held all over the world-a program call TEDx-web videos of speeches from those satellite events are piling onto TEDx's YouTube channel.One of the latest additions features Elizabeth Davis, a twenty-something educator who moved from Nashville to Rwanda right after graduating from Vanderbilt University. Davis is now the executive director of The Akilah Institute for Women, a vocational school that's taking a smart approach to career education in Africa.It's twist: It's offering women in the nation recovering from the horror of genocide the skills they need to work in the hospitality industry, the sector that the Rwandan government fingered as the largest potential growth area in the country.Here's the setup of the problem Rwanda faced, which Akilah will attempt to fill:
The hospitality industry is actually the fastest growing sector of Rwanada's economy. They are expecting that by 2020 the hospitality industry will have brought in over $650 million in investment into Rwanda. … Because of the genocide and because of the lack of adequate education, the government estimates that they need to train 5,000 to 6,000 people this year to fill the jobs that are in the hospitality industry. So, the demand and the jobs are there, but they don't have the education system.
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