UN gets Netaid

elena spectra at elits.rousse.bg
Sun Oct 10 04:46:02 PDT 1999


Netaid could be a great remedy; but to call it a revolution is to prefer palliative surgery to radical therapy (personal opinion) - to say nothing of prophylaxis.


>From the Netaid site:
World Wide Web Helps

War on Poverty

"Wealth is the blanket we wear. Poverty is to have

that blanket taken away." These simple yet

powerful words come from an African activist in

Botswana. But what's that blanket made of? Before

1990, it was woven with food, shelter, clinics, and

schools. Now, if you're not on the Net, you're out in

the cold.

The Net's the new frontier: the Wild West has

become the World Wide Web. Research shows

that if you're logged on, you're likely to be young,

white, male, and making good money. Women,

poor people, ethnic groups are likely to be

excluded.

Why is access to the Net so important? Will it put

food in the mouths of starving children, or raise a

roof over a homeless family? When you have no

clean water to drink or can't read and write, why do

computers matter? Here are just a few examples of

how the Internet works for poor people.

Saving lives. When the Internet was used, it took

hours instead of weeks to link groups managing

relief supplies in Washington DC to needy

communities in remote Honduras after Hurricane

Mitch hit in 1998. In Gambia the grandparents of

AIDS orphans can visit electronic workshops to find

out how to organize their neighborhood to care for

the sick. Global networks are as important as

national ones: when former Zaire suffered a deadly

outbreak of Ebola in 1995, local doctors used

HealthNet to both alert neighbors and communicate

with the outside world.

Creating jobs. In just one Egyptian town (Zagazig),

119,000 graduates are unemployed; young men and

women are now getting trained at technology

access community centers on new skills that will

help find jobs. In Asia, students can start young,

thanks to a program (APDIP) that's bringing the Net

to schools in mobile units. All over the world,

PEOPLink helps bridge the gap between traditional

artisans and their ultimate consumers by training

and equipping them to use digital cameras and the

Internet to market their crafts and showcase their

rich cultural heritage.

Through an innovative partnership with educational

institutions across the world, Cisco Systems is

preparing students for the demands and enormous

opportunities of the information economy while

creating a qualified talent pool for building and

maintaining networks.

Assisting Farmers. The arrival of Internet to the

remote Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan is expected

to transform the lives of its people dramatically.

With links to the Internet, extension workers now

have access to the rapidly expanding knowledge

that could help farmers raise their production

immensely. Believing that food security is as

fundamental as the right to vote, FAO has

developed the Virtual extension and research

Communication Network (VERCON) to link

agricultural institutions to extension stations in the

field through the Internet.

Saving the environment. In Jamaica, farmers and

students can now go to community cyber-centers

to access information about new

environment-friendly technologies, as can women's'

groups in Cameroon and in Gambia - all for the cost

of a local call. In rural Sri Lanka, a community radio

team browses the Net for information requested by

the audience, translates it into local languages and

then broadcasts it in a daily program.

In fact, the Net is so valued in new countries that in

Estonia, where one in 10 people is already on line,

there is talk of making Internet access itself a

human right; And walk-in Internet posts are

mushrooming in one of the newest on-line

countries, Mongolia.

This is the aim of the NetAid partnership - backed

by the United Nations Development Programme

(UNDP), Cisco, and others - to make access to

information a right rather than a privilege, and help

win the war on poverty.

Take Action Back to Top Frontline Repor



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