Background • FTE (Fast Track to Employment) creates a win/win situation for everyone involved in this exciting project. • Beneficiaries include government, local community trainers, educational institutions, and local industry that gains skilled and enthusiastic employees. • But the real success is for the unemployed, who create new lives for themselves. • FTE provides a supportive and successful path to employment that assists the unemployed to re-enter and sustain their participation in the labour market. • FIT Ireland is the inspiration for Vancouver's FTE program. • In 1998, FIT Ireland initiated an innovative concept - the training of long-term unemployed people for a full-time career in the IT (Information Technology) sector. • With the active cooperation of local government, IT companies, community-based training providers and educators, FIT Ireland has graduated 1,400 people and provides Irish communities with previously high levels of long-term unemployment the opportunity to prosper. • Over 800 FIT Ireland grads have been placed in IT jobs in the last three years. • The goal of Vancouver's Fast Track to Employment  is to transfer this successful model to our community. • FTE will guide and facilitate existing community-based training providers and educational institutions into a coordinated and integrated array of services. This will be accomplished using industry-designed curriculum that is directly linked to employment opportunities.