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I've seen this suggestion elsewhere. I'm all in favor of it, but it kind of bugs me anyway. The assumption is that most people can learn to program (or do other forms of IT) if taught. I don't think that's the case. Programming well is hard. IT pays reasonably well because good IT people are hard to come by, and I don't think lack of access to training or facilities is the reason. Certainly not since OSS became widespread.
Any widespread solution to poverty has to work for people that don't have hacker-natures or Mensa-class IQs.
Yeah, it's a solution of type "pick a few people who are easiest to save, and save them, ignoring the rest".
It's worse than solving the problem globally; and it's better than doing nothing -- which is what most people will do; including most of those who like to think about global solutions. It's far from optimal. It's also something that one can do as an individual -- so it can be used as a backup plan is case no better idea comes around.
Assume that 1% of people could become good programmers. If we trained (or offered training to) 10x as many people, we would still end up with 10x as many programmers.
I grew up with computers in my home; I had a programmable calculator in middle school; my high school offered programming courses; my family could pay for me to go to a very strong CS university. Not everyone has those opportunities.
That assumes a random distribution of potential programmers. Isn't IQ highly correlated with both familial wealth and programming ability? I doubt anyone's compared the programmer-nature with wealth directly, but if the two are also highly correlated, that 1% could mostly already have access to the training they need. Offering to 10x more would just get you (slightly less than) 10x more bad programmers.