NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--An innovative, online training tool for women entrepreneurs called DreamBuilder that was developed by Canadian technology company Bluedrop, will be piloted at select Small Business Administration (SBA) Women’s Business Centers (WBC) across the United States. The announcement was made by the Honorable John Kerry, U.S. Secretary of State and Valerie Jarrett, Senior Advisor to President Obama and Chair of the White House Council on Women and Girls, at the annual meeting today in New York City.
DreamBuilder is an expansion of a program originally developed for women in mining communities in Chile and Peru. DreamBuilder is a 12-course program for women who own small or medium-sized businesses and need additional training and support to increase their income, job creation and success. If the DreamBuilder pilot is successful in the SBA’s Women’s Business Centers, the program could reach 100 centers nationwide serving almost 140,000 women. To learn more, visit www.dreambuilder.org.
The Equal Futures Partnership was launched on September 24, 2012 by the U.S. with 12 other founding members. The goal of the Partnership is to realize women’s human rights by expanding opportunities for women and girls to participate in public life and to drive inclusive economic growth in their respective countries.
Bluedrop Performance Learning (TSX-V: BPL) founder and CEO, Emad Rizkalla, participated in the announcement today with Kellie Kreiser, Executive Director of Thunderbird for Good and Tracy Bame, President of the Freeport-McMoRan Copper & Gold Foundation. The three companies worked together to build the DreamBuilder program.
“Working with our project partners, we are pleased to bring small business and entrepreneurship training to women across the U.S. through Dreambuilder,” said Emad Rizkalla, founder and CEO of Bluedrop. “It was validating to be a part of this forum today alongside global leaders from around the world and it certainly speaks to how powerful our CoursePark platform can be as a global skills enabler ,” Rizkalla added.
About Bluedrop Performance Learning
Bluedrop Performance Learning (TSX-V: BPL) is an innovator in workplace training. The company was launched in 2004 and has more than 100 employees in six offices across Canada. Bluedrop transforms workplace learning by designing and delivering training content that enables individuals to improve their skills and their employers to increase productivity. CoursePark.com is Bluedrop’s cloud-based eLearning platform that contains over 5,000 third-party online courses from the world’s leading publishers and subject matter experts.
Bluedrop is a member of the Clinton Global Initiative and the DreamBuilder project team. For more information, visit www.bluedrop.com.
About Thunderbird School of Global Management
Thunderbird is the world’s No.1-ranked school of international business with nearly 70 years of experience in developing leaders with the global mindset, business skills and social responsibility necessary to create real, sustainable value for their organizations, communities and the world.
Dedicated to preparing students to be global leaders and committed global citizens, Thunderbird was the first graduate business school to adopt a Professional Oath of Honor. Thunderbird’s global network of alumni numbers 40,000 graduates in 147 nations worldwide. The school is sought out by graduate students, working professionals and companies seeking to gain the skills necessary for success in today’s global economy. For more about Thunderbird, visit http://www.thunderbird.edu.
About Freeport-McMoRan Copper & Gold Inc.
Freeport-McMoRan is a leading international mining company with headquarters in Phoenix, Arizona. Freeport-McMoRan operates large, long-lived, geographically diverse assets with significant proven and probable reserves of copper, gold, molybdenum, cobalt, oil and gas. Freeport-McMoRan has a dynamic portfolio of operating, expansion and growth projects in the copper industry. Freeport-McMoRan is also the world’s largest producer of molybdenum and a significant gold, oil and gas producer. The company’s portfolio of assets includes the Grasberg minerals district, one of the world’s largest copper and gold mine in terms of recoverable reserves; significant mining operations in the Americas, including the large scale Morenci and Safford minerals districts in North America and the Cerro Verde and El Abra operations in South America; and the Tenke Fungurume minerals district in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Freeport-McMoRan’s portfolio of oil and gas assets include strong oil production facilities in California, a growing production profile in the onshore Eagle Ford trend in Texas, significant production facilities and growth potential in the Deepwater Gulf of Mexico and large onshore resources in the Haynesville natural gas trend in Louisiana. In addition, FCX is an industry leader in the emerging ultra-deep gas trend with sizeable potential, located offshore in the shallow waters of the Gulf of Mexico and onshore in South Louisiana.
Media contact:
Libby Carew
Bluedrop Performance Learning
libbycarew@bluedrop.com
709.725.7627