Rural populations and the undereducated living in LDCs are very often trapped in agriculture-based economies that shackle them to subsistence wages. For example, the World Bank reports that in the South Asian region (Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka), the annual per-capita income is around $300 and lower, depending on the country. More than 70 percent of the people in this region live in rural areas and earn their living in agriculture and agriculture-related activities.

It all comes down to the basic premise that ties the economic development of a country to the level of investment in its most valuable asset Human capital, which is the knowledge and skills of workers, is a renewable and scalable resource. Just as American employers who seek to remain stable and viable in the competitive global economy need workers who can react to the swiftly changing economy by learning new skills rapidly, developing countries need the same well trained worker to enter the global marketplace. Those workers who are comfortable with and expect continuous training are valuable for that trait and for the skills they have to offer the employer.

In addition, workers who previously relied on outdated skills could update those skills for current and future industries that have a far less damaging impact on the environment than the many alternatives currently available to LDCs such as mining, forest clear-cutting and providing a depository for toxic waste.

The obstacles for the training of workers in LDCs are significant. While US businesses wrestle with the challenge of updating workers' skills, LDCs must grapple with more complex obstacles to economic development including illiteracy, poor health care systems, environmental threats, cultural customs, large rural or remote populations out of reach of wired or radio-spectrum technologies, and added complexities caused by the existence of multiple languages.

Still, education and training could industrialized nations numbers of its workers are forced to rely on outdated or nonexistent workplace skills.

And yet delivering workplace training requires an enormous amount of coordination. To ensure that workers have access to appropriate training and education requires a variety of delivery models including the traditional classroom, on-site training centers and an even more flexible model: distance learning. For those workers for whom getting to a classroom is just not practical, distance learning is not time- or place-bound Developing countries could take many of the workplace training models that are being used by companies in the US for the training and education of their citizens. One example is the workplace education and training developed by the Workforce Distance Learning Foundation (WDLF).

To enable companies and unions to provide Web access to distance learning for working families to participate in educational programs, WDLF has developed "e-learning" courses along with a variety of support services including evaluation and assessment tools and career counseling. Their efforts benefit 19 joint labor/management educational program that belong to the Association of Joint Labor/Management Educational.

Programs timely educational and training opportunities for workers. The members of the Association of Joint Labor/Management Educational Programs are not widely known outside of workplace education circles, but they are responsible for the education and training needs of more than 1,000,000 workers in America. Association members hail from 11 labor unions and 350 employers in a variety of industries and professions including aerospace, health care, steel, telecommunications, printing, government, building maintenance, transportation and higher education. As diverse as they are, all of these employers share a common need to deliver the most appropriate training and education to union-represented workers in the most efficient manner.

The workers served by association's members are not a homogeneous group. Participants in joint program training activities must cope with the same barriers to education that most adult students face. Work schedules, family commitments and other activities limit the time available to this adult learner. Traditional "bricks and mortar" classrooms with static and inflexible class schedules are inaccessible to many. Asynchronous, or time-shifted, distance education gives the worker the opportunity engage in learning on his or her own schedule. It is being used by government workers, steelworkers, telecommunications professionals and more.

In the telecommunications industry, for instance, the Alliance for Employee Growth & Development: Cooperative Labor/Management Venture is a joint program supported by Agere, AT&T, Avaya Communication, the Communications Workers of America (CWA), the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW), Lucent Technologies and Tyco Electronic Power Systems. The alliance created an award-winning series of CD-ROMs to help workers improve their "soft" skills with the "Workplace Effectiveness" series.

Consisting of three titles, "Critical Thinking Skills," "Decision-Making Strategies" and "Dealing with Change," these easy-to-use CD-ROMs act as a private tutorial for the worker. Because each CD-ROM is self-paced, the user is able to review the tutorial on his/her own time. Donald Treinen, co-executive director of the alliance, explained, "We chose the CD-ROM format recognizing that 15 to 20 percent of our participants do not find classroom training accessible; therefore technology-based learning is their only option."

Some association members are engaged in converting traditional classroom courses into a distance learning format. Ann Glaze Pufundt is the director of the Upward Mobility Program, a joint venture of the state of Illinois and the Association of Federal, State, County & Municipal Employees (AFSCME) District Council 31. She explained that a big problem with filling the state of Illinois' information technology jobs was not a lack of interest by workers, but an inability to get students into classrooms located in the state capital.

"Access to training in Springfield was severely hampered because courses were routinely canceled due to lack of enrollment," she said. "When our participants complained that travel to the classroom was burdensome, we realized we had to take a good look at a more accessible way to deliver the training."

Pufundt's colleague, Kathy Wood, AFSCME coordinator, noted that the development of this asynchronous online curriculum will result in the sort of flexibility that will allow the program to "respond more rapidly to the needs of our workers and to the changing aspects of jobs related to information technology."

Another, more common model for making distance learning accessible to workers is through the process of contracting with vendors to provide a menu of courses study. For many potential distance learning students, the task of choosing a provider is daunting. If the joint program has already contracted with a provider that offers a broad selection, this can be of tremendous help to the student.

"ICD has many isolated sites throughout the country, and distance learning has emerged as one of the most effective ways of expanding learning opportunities for steelworkers," said Harmon Lisnow, Executive Director of the Institute for Career Development, sponsored by the United Steelworkers of America and 13 participating steel companies. The work of delivering education and training, while challenging, is certainly a lot less daunting with distance learning technologies. As the above examples have illustrated, successful training efforts take into consideration the technological proficiency and access of the student. For the workers of developing countries, access could be aided through the use of solar-powered satellite technologies that eliminate dependency on telephone lines and wired electrical sources.

Giving workers the opportunity to improve their skills or for personal enrichment can also have a very positive impact on the business that employs the worker and the nation's economy.

More information on the Association of Joint Labor/Management Educational Program and its members can be found at www.workplacelearning.org or by calling 212-949-1378.

Marshall Goldberg is Executive Director of the Association of Joint Labor/Managment Educational Programs. Regina Robinson is its Project Manager.