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APTN Monthly Newsletter | Issue 02- June 2010 |
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Message from the APTN Secretariat APTN is Moving!
Dear Members,
Since Ning has announced that they are going to phase out free networks, we have decided to move APTN community portal from http://a-ptnetwork.ning.com to another location.
Currently our new portal is at http://grou.ps/aptn and soon will be available at www.aptn.asia This message is just to notify you inadvance on upcoming changes in the APTN community portal. Please note that all the registered members of the APTN community portal do not need to register at the new location since their profiles will be automatically created and it will be notified upon new launch. All of photos, videos, blog posts, etc. will be restored at the new location.
If you have any questions regarding this, feel free to email us at
Thank you.
Best Regards,
APTN Secretariat
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Webinar: What do you like to talk about? telecentre.org Foundation will organize a series webinars this year as part of its community learning activities. To ensure that the webinars will cover issues that are relevant to the global telecentre community, telecentre.org would like to know what topics most interest you. You can either select from the list or propose other topics in the on-going forum below. telecentre.org look forward to your ideas! |
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 Philippines celebrates ICT month in JuneJune is National Information and Communications Technology (ICT) Month in the Philippines.
This year's theme is Get Online Philippines! which highlights the country's achievements in establishing a robust and reliable ICT infrastructure and harnessing the power of ICT to improve communications, education, business and government services, including the country's first ever automated elections, which impact all aspects of the lives of Filipinos. In commemoration of this, the Philippine Commission on ICT issued Memorandum Circular No. 2, Series of 2010 which calls on all departments, bureaus, offices, agencies, and instrumentalities of the national government, including local government units, to actively participate in the celebration.
Several activities and programs are lined up for the month-long celebration to include industry and stakeholder symposia, orientations and webinars for various sectoral groups, training and educational programs, visits at Community eCenters (CeCs or telecentres) offering ICT services and information, advocacy and information dissemination, free Internet use and access to online data on health, agriculture, education, and job opportunities, and similar activities to promote ICT use throughout the country
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 601st Nenasala
to be open in Badulla, The 601st Nenasala under the programme of setting up 1000 Nenasala telecentres or 'wisdom outlets' island-wide will be declared open at the Badulla Senarat Paranavitana Library on Thursday 24th instant at 9.00 a.m.
The Information and Communication Technology Agency of Sri Lanka (ICTA) says that the setting of this Nenasala is a further step in implementing President Mahinda Rajapaksa's concept of making the benefits of ICT reach the rural society.
ICTA COO Reshan Dewapura says that the Nenasala set up at the Badulla Senarat Paranavitana Library, the only grade library in the Uva Province, will provide a valuable service to the people of the Uva Province.
Several ICT facilities including Internet and e-mail facilities, photocopying services, access to agricultural information will be available to the people through this Nenasala.
The Nenasala will be declared open by Uva Province Chief Minister Shasheendra Rajapaksa at the auspicious moment of 9.00 a.m. A large number of distinguished guests including Badulla Mayor Attorney-at-law Upali Nissanka will participate in the event.
Implemented under the e-Sri Lanka initiative the Nenasala project has won awards as the best model of people-centred ICT centres in the world. |
Creating a 'Digital Bangladesh' by 2021.... In line with the present government's vision to build 'Digital Bangladesh' by 2021, ICT facilities will be expanded to 2000 more unions in the country by this year to reach such facilities to the doorsteps of the rural people.
"Against the backdrop of tremendous success in 102 unions, the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) facilities will be expanded to 2000 more unions by December this year," Mohammad Nazrul Islam Khan, national project director of Access to Information (A2I) Programme under the Prime Minister's Office, told BSS on Friday.
Khan added that the government has also a plan to set up union information centres (UICs) in all 4484 unions by 2011 with a view to bringing the country's total population under ICT facilities.
With the expansion of the ICT facilities, he said, a huge number of people will get offline and online facilities such as different government forms and information about agriculture, health, education, legal aid, human rights and employment.
Besides, services like composing, printing, photo, scanning, email, internet browsing and multimedia projector will be provided to the rural people at a nominal price, he said.
"The most modern technology has brought about revolutionary changes in the life and living of a huge number of people of 102 unions," said Manik Mahmud, a consultant of A2I Programme.
"The people of the unions now get all information about agriculture, education, health, business, sports through the UICs and make invaluable contribution to the socioeconomic development," he said.
Manik said the UICs would be run in future under the public- private partnership and an agreement to this end has already been signed between Bangladesh Computer Council (BCC) and Bangladesh Telecentre Network (BTN).
READ MORE |
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Telecentre News Beyond Asia Pacific |
Telecenters Award Brazil 2010 Written BY : Eiko Kawamura The Telecenters Award Brazil is an achievement of ATN, in co-promotion with the Ministries Science and Technology and Mines and Energy, Support Center for Technology Development at the University of Brasilia and with several other partners from the public and private sectors.
The Telecenters Award Brazil's main goals:
· Acknowledge the work of digital inclusion by the public and private sector, stimulate the activities of Telecenters across the country;
· Raise the level of business competitiveness; promote reflection of reference cases technological, environmental;
· Social and digital inclusion of entrepreneurship in the country; foster ongoing interaction between the government sectors.
· Business, academic and social digital inclusion in Brazil.
· Encourage the submission of applications aligned with public policies, highlighting: distance learning, health, employment and income generation, sports, music, leisure, citizenship, safety, social and economic development;
· Encourage the dissemination in the country the concept of Green Telecentre and Digital Convergence;
· Contemplate people who excel in the activities of digital inclusion. |
Nurturing Human Activity: The NUHA Foundation & the Salamieh Telecentre in Syria Written By: Tanya Ghaziani, NUHA Foundation Outreach Team "Take a little more than thirty young adults. Spread them across seven countries and choose nine different nationalities. Sprinkle generously with enthusiasm and responsibility. Mix with a unanimous cause."
Amongst the various achievements the NUHA Foundation can pride itself on, one of the most significant is its rapid growth in the span of just two years. What began in 2008 as a simple vision and an email exchange between two friends has developed into an organization with a base in England, activities in Syria, and, as stated above, constituents in seven countries. While the Foundation has changed in several capacities over the last couple of years, its aim, to foster effective learning communities by supporting existing structures, that is, has always remained intact. In pursuing this aim, NUHA has created two programmes: the Libraries for Development Programme and English Conversation Programme.
The Libraries for Development Programme (LDP) aims to expand the intellectual infrastructure, social capital, and economic development of its beneficiary communities. The programme achieves this in two ways: first, it supports foreign language acquisition, particularly in English, and second, it aspires to foster a reading culture as a means of developing all members of the community and encourage continuous learning. The first allows participants to deepen their engagement with the global knowledge society, increase the beneficiaries' capacity for web-based entrepreneurship and provides a space to enjoy enhanced professional and academic opportunities. The second enhances the users' ability to remain competitive in their individual professional and educational environments and provides an opportunity to contribute to the growth of the community by transmitting their desire to learn onto younger generations. |
Telecentre-Europe info session in Brussels Telecentre-Europe organized an information exchange session in Brussels last week, where the Co-chairs Gabi Barna and Ian Clifford presented plans for the network to an audience of representatives of the following European Commission DG's:
- Information Society and Media
- Employment, Social Affairs and Equal Opportunities
- Education and Culture
The purpose of this meeting was to raise Telecentre-Europe's profile within the European Commission, by lobbying the contribution that telecentres are making to achieve the goals of the Digital Agenda, and by showing how a united network of telecentres across Europe can be a viable and effective partner in implementing the eInclusion policies.
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Upcoming ICT Events from Asia Pacifc |
Hyderabad to host eIndia, international exhibition of "IT for India" State government of India has targeted to achieve at least third position in Information Technology exports in the country by the next financial year. Information Technology Department Principal Secretary K. Ratna Prabha said the State which was a forerunner in initiating several e-governance measures, being emulated by other States, was, however, 'a bit late' on the IT exports front.
It was expected to register exports of Rs. 36,000 crore during the financial year ended March 31, 2010, in spite of recession. This was against Rs. 32,000 crore achieved last year and constituted about 15 per cent of the country's total exports. "We cannot remain complacent as Karnataka contributes 30 per cent of the total exports.
A lot of hard work is needed to achieve that figure," she said. Ms. Ratna Prabha was speaking at a meeting to announce eIndia, the country's largest ICT conclave focussing on "IT for India", to be held here from August 4 to 6.
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GENDER, ICTS AND RURAL LIVELIHOODS: Special Online Forum, 5-16 July 2010 Join e-Agriculture and GenARDIS* in a special online forum in English that will explore some of the challenges that people and projects face when
implementing projects aimed at empowering women and ICTs in rural livelihoods.
The forum will look at what has worked, what has not worked, and good practices, as well as the critical area of capacity building and what can be done to empower women and men in playing a more vital role in ICTs for
agriculture and rural development.
Furthermore, the Forum aims to explore evaluation and will facilitate discussion on how we produce evidence that donors need to take the importance of women in rural ICTs seriously.
The forum will be hosted entirely online with the e-Agriculture Community platform at http://www.e-agriculture.org. READ MORE |
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Contact Info
Asia-Pacific Telecentre Network Secretariat,
ICT Agency of Sri Lanka,
No. 160/24, Kirimandala Mawatha, Colombo 05,
Sri Lanka
Tel: +94-11-23699099
Fax: +94-11-2369091
email: info@icta.lk |
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| The Asia-Pacific Telecentre Network (APTN) is a collaborative initiative of the United Nations' Economic and Social Commission for the Asia-Pacific (UN-ESCAP) and telecentre.org and APTN Secretariat presently being hosted at ICT Agency (ICTA) Sri Lanka. The network will promote innovation and knowledge-sharing amongst Telecentre organizations in the Asia-Pacific region where Telecentres are growing exponentially each year. The APTN is expected to be developed into a unique network of Governments and Private sector supported telecentres, telecentre service providers, research & development organizations, telecentre experts, consultants and other stake holders active in the field of communication and information technology. APTN will serve as the focal network or the knowledge hub for communication and information technology in the Asia Pacific region. |
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