| Tuesday, October 31, 2006 | MANILA, PHILIPPINES Philippine Silicon Valley By DENNIS POSADAS Like many Third World countries, the digital divide in the Philippines is gargantuan. Only about 6% of public schools have Internet training and access. Only 39% of the 5,443 public high schools have computers that can be wired to the Internet. In contrast, most private schools provide access and training for their students on how to utilize the Web.
GILAS, a nonprofit collaboration between private companies and the public sector, is hoping to provide an Internet lab for each of the 5,443 public high schools nationwide. GILAS, which stands for Gearing up Internet Literacy and Access for Students, is led by Ayala Foundation, the nonprofit arm of the Ayala Group. It recently celebrated a milestone by wiring its 1,000th public high school to the Internet.
The challenges in forming public partnerships to wire several thousand schools appeared daunting, yet many companies and individuals eventually signed up to help. Other supporters of GILAS include most companies of the Ayala Group; others like Smart Communication, Inc., Philippine Long Distance Telephone Corp., Bayan Telecommunications, Inc.; multinationals like Goldman Sachs, American Express, Citigroup, United Parcel Service; information technology giants like Intel, IBM, Microsoft and Apple; foreign and local government groups like the US Embassy, American Chamber of Commerce, departments of Education and Trade and Industry, and a host of individuals and nonprofit groups. Filipinos abroad, especially in the United States were an especially rich source of funding: over $160,000 worth of donations were received from them.
There are several approaches to bridging the digital divide. One Laptop Per Child, an American nonprofit group started by former MIT Media Lab chairman Nicolas Negroponte, believes that the answer in bridging the divide is to give each child a laptop that costs approximately $100. Last October 11, The New York Times reported that Libya announced plans to purchase $250 million worth of laptops from One Laptop Per Child, for its 1.2 million schoolchildren. Other countries such as Brazil, Argentina, Nigeria and Thailand have promised to support the $100 laptop.
The guardians of the personal computer industry, Dell and Microsoft, have other ideas as well. Dell is pitching a low-cost computer for Asia, while Microsoft believes in its FlexGo solutions, cheap computers whose Windows software have been modified to accept prepaid card payments, in effect allowing the user to slowly amortize the ownership of the computer.
"We are now setting our sights on the remaining goal, that of connecting the remaining 4,789 public high schools," said Jaime Augusto Zobel de Ayala, president and chief executive officer of the Ayala Group and co-chair of the GILAS project. "We cannot rest on our laurels, we need to accelerate the pace, the youth cannot wait," he added. Mr. Zobel de Ayala estimates that 1.7 million will graduate from high school this year, and he hopes that they will be better equipped for future challenges because of their ability to use the Internet.
* * * Sources:  GILAS Web site <http://www.gilas.org/>
speech of Jaime Augusto Zobel de Ayala on Oct. 26, Hotel InterContinental Manila. John Markoff, "U.S. group reaches deal to provide laptops to all Libyan schoolchildren," The New York Times, Oct. 11, 2006. Jens Glüsing, Padma Rao and Hilmar Schmundt, "The dirt road to the information superhighway," Der Spiegel Online, June 1, 2006 <http://www.spiegel.de/international/spiegel/0,1518,419034,00.html.> |
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