Partnership with
telecentre.org
will extend access to basic ICT training to more than one million
disadvantaged women worldwide
ITU
launched a digital literacy partnership with Philippine-based NGO
telecentre.org
Foundation that over the next 18 months will train one million
unskilled women to use computers and modern information and
communication technology (ICT) applications to improve their
livelihoods.
The new Women’s Digital Literacy Campaign
will leverage the combined reach of telecentre.org Foundation’s
global network of 100,000 telecentres worldwide and ITU’s 192
Member States and 700 Sector Members to deliver training in ICT use
following a ‘train the trainer’ model.
Between now and end 2012, training courses will
be offered in at least 20,000 telecentres in countries around the
world, each of which is expected to train at least 50 women – for a
total of one million women trained.
“We hope this joint
campaign with telecentre.org Foundation will have an enormous impact
on improving the condition of women, wherever they may live, and
whatever their circumstances”, said ITU Secretary-General Dr
Hamadoun Touré. “With technology now widely recognized as a
critical enabler for socio-economic development, this campaign will
further reinforce ITU’s global efforts to promote the digital
inclusion of women, and will be a key element in achieving Millennium
Development Goal 3 on gender equality”.
Basheerhamad Shadrach,
Executive Director of telecentre.org Foundation, said that offering
digital skills to over one million women at the grassroots will help
reverse the paradigm whereby, in many countries, technologies most
often benefit
men more than women. “These telecentre women, once trained to take
advantage of the power of technology, will help their communities to
access locale-specific information, time-tested knowledge, market
opportunities, enhanced skills for employment and productivity, and
more importantly, participate in the modern knowledge era, not only
as mere consumers, but also as providers and producers of knowledge
assets", he said.
(Source: ITU
Press release)
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