..Press Release................................ UNESCAP News Services

Date 27 September 2007
Press Release No. G/37/2007

UNESCAP Helps Rural E-Centres Joining Forces to the Benefit of the Poor

Bangkok Meeting 27-28 September to Establish Regional Network

Bangkok (United Nations Information Services) -- Out of the world’s estimated 170,000 community e-centres – places where people in the poorest and remotest parts of the world can have access to computers and the Internet, around 14,000 are in Asia and the Pacific. The number is expected to jump ten folds in the next five years.

To help poor communities to make the most out of these e-centres, and to learn from each other’s good experience, the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (UNESCAP) is holding a meeting today and tomorrow (27 and 28 September) on establishing a regional knowledge network of e-centres. The meeting takes place at the United Nations Conference Centre in Bangkok.

Mr. Sivasankaran Thampi, Director of the Information, Communication and Space Technology Division of UNESCAP, said in his opening address that the regional knowledge network aims to enhance “interconnection” and “collaboration”.
Community e-centres, also known by different names such as telecentres, or community information centres, have already helped people living in remote areas to get much needed information and knowledge to improve their lives: farmers find crop market information to get better prices for their produce; students learn how to use computers to tap the vast source of information available in the Internet which places them in a better position in the job market; and women are empowered by the use of technology.

The proposed regional knowledge network of e-centres aims to improve their effectiveness as a development tool and to maximize limited resources by networking with each other to share experience and products, including content such as market information and training materials

Around 30 participants representing information and communication technology ministries, telecentres and telecentre associations, NGOs and UN agencies will develop and adopt a strategy for the creation of a regional knowledge network of telecentres at the meeting.

The meeting is part of a project on knowledge networking through ICT access points for disadvantaged communities, which is being implemented by the United Nations through its five Regional Commissions: ECA in Africa, ECE in Europe, ESCWA in West Asia, ECLAC in Latin America and the Caribbean, and ESCAP in Asia and the Pacific.

More information on the meeting is available at: http://www.telecentresap.org/
For more information, please contact:

Thawadi Pachariyangkun
Public Information Officer
United Nations Information Services
ESCAP
Tel: 66+02288 1861
Email: unisbkk.unescap@un.org