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telecentre.org, a global community of people committed for improving the capacity and sustainability of community telecentres around the world, today announced a telecentre.org academy Curriculum Commons Grant of Rs 50 lakh (US $ 125 000) for improving the quality and standard of grassroots knowledge workers, commonly referred to as telecentre managers.

telecentre.org is a collaborative social investment program initiated by Canada’s International Development Research Centre (IDRC), Microsoft Corporation Pvt Ltd and the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC). The grant initiative also coincides with the silver jubilee celebrations of IDRC’s Regional Office for South Asia and China (SARO) in New Delhi.

D Purandeswari, Minister of State for Higher Education, Ministry of Human Resource Development, Government of India, made the announcement during the inaugural address of the eINDIA 2008 conference.

Dr Basheerhamad Shadrach, Senior Programme Officer, telecentre.org, said, “The telecentre.org academy is one of our initiatives to support the global telecentre movement. The objective of the academy is to meet the growing capacity needs of grassroots telecentre managers around the world, whose number is estimated to reach the one million mark by 2010.”

’’The telecentre.org academy is in the process of developing a ‘curriculum commons site’ as an online repository and library of curriculum and training material in order to encourage their use, re-use, translation and adaptation across the world,’’ he added.

telecentre.org is in the process of establishing tc.org academies in 10 nations this year.

Endorsing telecentre.org’s efforts, Michael Rawding, Vice President, Microsoft Unlimited Potential Group, said, “Technology alone cannot bridge the digital divide – capacity building is the other vital task needed. This is why the initiative announced today is so important.

Microsoft’s Unlimited Potential is committed to reach the benefits of technology to the currently underserved people, and telecentres can help towards that mission in a significant way.”

The grant will be offered to organisations interested in developing, packaging and licensing training content for the thousands of grassroots telecentre managers who are engaged in creating inclusive and informed communities in both developing developed countries. Each such organisation will be given a grant of upto Rs 2 lakh (US $ 5 000) for a content-creation programme. A total of 25 organisations will be chosen for the grants.

For more details, please contact: Dr B Shadrach, telecentre.org, International Development Research Centre, New Delhi, bshadrach@idrc.org.in  

2008-07-29

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