The Global Online Workforce (GLOW) program was introduced to facilitate onboarding and provide guidance to targeted communities to become competitive and sustainable online/digital freelancers. The program also aims to export capable Malaysian talents who are able to bid and win projects/jobs globally and earn a stable income. Collaboration was also forged with various international freelance marketplace platforms such as Freelancer.com and Workana.com

The GLOW program focuses on individuals with professional skill sets, which includes unemployed graduates, young professionals seeking career growth, talent workforce especially young women, and retrenched workers. The GLOW modules have also been offered as an elective course at several branches of the University Teknologi MARA (UiTM) - a local public university with several campuses throughout the country. Lecturers and students were trained to become trainers and agents in catalyzing the development of new service-based, digital entrepreneurs.

The COVID-19 pandemic has impacted the local economy and in Malaysia, the unemployment rate increased significantly to 4.5% in 2020, with 772,900 individuals were unemployed. To make matters worse, skill-related underemployment were totaling 1.89 million persons in 2020 and only 43% of jobs created in 2019 are for skilled workers. To address these job market gaps and provides alternative employment for the impacted workforce who were either retrenched or facing a reduction in salary, as well as those new unemployed graduates, MDEC has proposed to the Government to implement a special GLOW program as part of the Economy Recovery Plan (PENJANA) in the third quarter of 2020. The Government, and the Ministry of Finance (MOF) in particular, supported and approved the special GLOW program which is also known as the GLOW-PENJANA, which provide 3-months intensive training, mentoring, and coaching to assist affected Malaysian workers to become effective digital freelancers, performing work from global companies and clients.

https://mdec.my/glowmalaysia/

• Malaysia

• Youth
• Women
• The unemployed
• Unemployed Graduates, Underemployed, Retrenched Workers, Latent Workforce (esp. Women and Youth)

The model of GLOW-PENJANA programme is replicable in other state or by industry sector. The important ecosystem components are :
1) National Freelancers Repository platform
2) Experienced Freelancers as trainers / mentors
3) Programme to facilitate profiling and qualifying of freelancer
4) Professional and intensive development / training programme for online freelancers including skill enhancement & global marketability training programme
5) Partnership with various ecosystem partners to address the issues of freelancer's safety net and support system

1) Fees from skills upskilling programme of some of the participants. Examples, technical & professional training courses and
certifications.
2) Fees from professional advisory and mentoring / coaching to new freelancers.
3) Creation of Digital Freelance Agency model - a group of freelancers who bid, win and manage projects collectively as a single
entity

The GLOW-PENJANA programme promotes WSIS values in the society mainly through capacity building whereby Malaysian freelancers were trained and developed as a global online workforce which enable them to benefit from the new opportunities offered by ICTs for traditional jobs, self-employment and new professions.