By Town Crier Report

The North Valley Job Training Consortium (NOVA) offers area small businesses a free training program, TechForce, to upgrade the information technology skills of their employees, from entry-level to management.

The training will help businesses in Santa Clara and San Mateo counties that have 100 or fewer employees stay competitive with larger chains, NOVA officials said. Courses, taught at local community colleges, include network management, system administration, Web and Internet systems, engineering, programming languages, and network and security systems. For information, call Julee Dinh at (408) 522-1053 or e-mail to TechForce@novaworks.org.