During this 8-hour deep dive, you will be introduced to the key techniques, services, and trends that will help you understand foundation models from the ground up. This means breaking down theory, mathematics, and abstract concepts combined with hands-on exercises to gain functional intuition for practical application. Throughout the course, we focus on a wide spectrum of progressively complex generative AI techniques, giving you a strong base to understand, design, and apply your own models for the best performance. We’ll start with recapping foundation models, understanding where they come from, how they work, how they relate to generative AI, and what you can to do customize them. You’ll then learn about picking the right foundation model to suit your use case.

UN Women AI School is a regional movement and learning programme that equips UN staff, policy makers, civil society, and young leaders to learn, build, and govern safe, gender-inclusive AI. Through a shared core curriculum on AI foundations, responsible use, and prompt craft—plus weekly Expert Talks and hands-on Innovation Labs—participants turn ideas into policy briefs, tools and datasets that serve communities across the region. A 24/7 Companion GPT supports practice and catch-up, and the Grand Challenge spotlights standout projects. All toolkits and templates are open for replication across Asia and the Pacific.

WFP aims to integrate a human-centred design approach into all the technology solutions it develops. When it comes to large and complex organizations like WFP, a human-centred design approach involves ensuring that all services are designed well with the user at the centre. This training course will give you an understanding of the human-centred design approach, where service design comes in, why it is so valuable, and how it can be applied in an organization like WFP.

The course builds upon the Inclusive Digital Economies and Gender Equality Playbook, UNCDF’s practical how-to guide on using the market system development approach to decrease the digital and financial divide for women and girls, use technology to improve women’s economic opportunities and help to transform women into builders of emerging digital economies.