Rafael Sosa Marte’s journey with the Digital Transformation Centres Initiative in the Dominican Republic

Rafael Sosa Marte’s journey with the Digital Transformation Centres Initiative in the Dominican Republic

At 7am, Rafael Sosa Marte drives to work at the Community Technology Centre in Bayaguana municipality, in the Dominican Republic, where he serves as the Centre Manager.

The Centre is a part of the ITU Digital Transformation Centre (DTC) Initiative- launched in 2019, in partnership with Cisco- which aims to provide digital skills training at basic and intermediate levels to the public, particularly to the underserved communities, including persons with disabilities, ensuring everyone has equal access and opportunities in the digital landscape.

Rafael developed a disability at the age of 21 but was determined to not allow his physical disability to hinder his aspirations.

“I had computer skills… and I become more interested in expanding my technical knowledge,” he said. “I decided to study so I wouldn’t stay at home doing nothing.”

Leveraging his background in tech to achieve something meaningful in life, he worked his way up from the local municipal library where he provided technical support and equipment maintenance, ensuring that they were accessible for persons with disabilities.

He then became the elected Education Representative for his community. Around that time, he came across the services offered at the Centre and was keen on being a part of the initiative to help foster inclusive digital and socio-economic development for his people.

He became the Centre Manager in 2021 to lead operations for the DTC in empowering more marginalized people, especially people with disabilities like him, with digital skills and knowledge.

The Centre offers courses from the Cisco curriculum, including “Get Connected,” “Introduction to IoT and Digital Transformation,” “Cybersecurity,” and “Networking Essentials” for business skills development.

Recently, the Centre also conducted training sessions for 50 instructors as part of the “train-the-trainer” program under the ITU project ‘Boosting Digital Skills through Digital Transformation Centres.’

Through the DTC Initiative, the ITU Telecommunication Development Sector continues to motivate and empower digital changemakers and leaders like Rafael to accelerate the adoption of digital skills within marginalized communities.

Rafael’s journey exemplifies the commitment of the DTC community to bridging the digital skills divide and nurturing a more inclusive future for all.

This is an ITU Development #DigitalImpactUnlocked story

About the project

Project number: 7GLO20108
Project title: Boosting digital skills through Digital Transformation Centres (DTCs)
Description: Despite unprecedented progress in technological development across the globe, the digital divide persists with almost half the population remaining offline and slowing growth rates in Internet uptake. Among those excluded from the digital world are populations living in rural and underserved communities, low-income households, women and girls and other marginalized groups. As access to digital services increases and the cost of access decreases, lack of digital skills is becoming one of the greatest barriers to digital inclusion, particularly for people at the bottom of the social pyramid in developing countries. In addition, the business sector (including SMEs and start-ups) often lacks employees with the necessary digital skills to become successful in an increasing digital economy. Despite the existence of several targeted digital education and skills policies and programmes, the skills gap remains persistent and is even growing in view of the growth of the technology sector and the demand for a digitally skilled workforce across all other sectors. It is against this background that ITU and Cisco launched the Digital Transformation Centres (DTC) Initiative in September 2019. The objective of the Initiative is to support countries develop digital skills mainly at basic and intermediate level and particularly in the underserved communities. The capacity to scale and to deliver digital skills training to a large number of citizens is a core objective of the Initiative.

Visit the project page for more details.