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OAS DEVELOPMENT AGENCY TO PROVIDE LOW-COST COMPUTERS TO CARIBBEAN

  December 15, 2003

The Inter-American Agency for Cooperation and Development (IACD), the development arm of the Organization of American States (OAS), has signed an agreement with the Caribbean Association of National Telecommunications Organizations (CANTO) to provide low-cost computers to teachers and schools in the Caribbean.

Under the agreement, signed recently in Jamaica, the IACD will work through CANTO member organizations to help ensure that classrooms in the Caribbean have access to the Internet.

“This agreement is a significant step in the Agency's commitment to harnessing new information technologies to improve the quality of educational services, and to accelerate the distribution of knowledge and learning opportunities throughout the Caribbean and the Americas,” said IACD Director General Ronald Scheman.

In the first initiative to be undertaken as a result of the agreement, the IACD will support a major effort by the Cable & Wireless Jamaica Foundation to provide telecommunications resources to the Jamaican educational system.

Cable & Wireless Jamaica announced on November 26 that its new non-profit foundation would donate millions of dollars towards education through the provision of telecommunications resources to schools. In making the announcement, Cable & Wireless President Gary Barrow said that through this effort, the company was “lighting a new candle as a symbol of the dawning of a new age of corporate and private sector giving.”

For more information about the IACD/CANTO agreement, please contact Jorge Duran at [email protected]

Reference: IACD