Mdec Announces Glow Aspirasi To Fortify Sharing Economy And Support For Digital Freelancers

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Malaysia Digital Economy Corporation (MDEC), Malaysia’s lead digital economy agency, today announced the Global Online Workforce (GLOW) Aspirasi programme for 2022, an initiative to continue supporting Malaysians to become competitive digital freelancers on a global platform.

Mahadhir Aziz, CEO of MDECGLOW Aspirasi is a distinct programme that echoes GLOW, the main programme that was introduced in 2016, and focuses on providing intensive training and mentoring sessions conducted solely by MDEC to ensure its quality and effectiveness.

Scheduled to run between May and September 2022, the programme is set to train, coach and mentor 4,000 Malaysians into becoming digital freelancers. It aims to assist at least 75 percent of the digital freelancers trained to generate income.

“Driven by digital platforms that complement the demand of the current economic landscape, GLOW Aspirasi intends to match the supply to those demands and promote access for Malaysians who want to participate in the sharing economy.

“We want to utilise and unlatch the idle asset in our economy and seize the opportunity to improve the household income, and that can be done through enhancing skills and improved employability of the gig workers,” said Mahadhir Aziz, CEO of MDEC.

The programme targets unemployed graduates with priority for those who are holding diplomas or bachelor’s degrees in Information Technology (IT), Computer Science, Multimedia, Business, Marketing, Hospitality and Linguistic.

MDEC will also prioritise employees from the tourism and hospitality, media creative, and education sectors who were affected by the extremities of the COVID-19 pandemic, particularly retrenched workers as well as those who experienced salary reduction of more than 30 percent.

Through the programme, participants will be given exposure and guidance to identify the potential online platforms that they can leverage their skills on as well as the training needed to enhance their skills.

The participants will be introduced to five pivotal clustered-topic such as websites, IT and software; content writing; design, media and architecture; data entry and virtual office admin; and sales and marketing.

The sessions will be led by GLOW trainers who are experienced freelancers with commendable track records and will also provide a free-of-charge virtual mentoring up to the point where participants have successfully garnered projects on platforms recognised by MDEC.

MDEC collaborates with a host of international and local platform partners to provide assurance for the freelancers to bid for jobs and projects in a safe and secure digital environment. Among the platforms are Upwork, Freelancer.com, Workana, Topcoder, 123RF, Favser.com, Rtist, Experfy, DesignCrowd and PeoplePerHour.

The GLOW programme was first introduced in 2016 to empower local talent through reskilling and upskilling courses and help online freelancing to be recognised as a lucrative career opportunity that can provide a sustainable income source.

Since it was introduced, GLOW has managed to train 73,198 individuals who managed to generate income of more than RM240 million combined.

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