Inspiring experience

• Generation WHY. Worldwide Horizons for Youth: Children serving as learning resources for their teachers and contributing to change in the learning environment. The foundation for Generation WHY is the extensive involvement of students in collaboration with teachers, the local community, and corporate sponsors to assist in the restructuring of education through telecommunications.

• Specialized teleCenters Of Professional Education (SCOPE). A non-profit developer of community-based telecenters worldwide for both urban and rural venues with a focus on underserved populations, particularly women, children and the disabled. In partnership with local communities using an innovative, grassroots approach, including the "televillage concept," Project SCOPE establishes telecenters which ensure universal access for all to education, training, community redevelopment, public health, and economic development programs via appropriate technology. Additionally, Project SCOPE telecenters will create "cultural connections" to provide a voice for each culture individually but designed for sharing and interaction with all cultures.

• MayaQuest. In Spring 1995 and Spring 1996, a team of five explorers bicycled to ruins in Mexico and Central America, met with on-site archaeologists, and attempted to unlock one of the most perplexing mysteries: the collapse of the ancient Maya civilization. But the team wasn't alone: over 1 million children, teachers and others from around the globe helped to lead the expedition by way of the Internet. Now opening the doors for next year's projects!

• Averroès Foundation. This foundation develops, assists and evaluates programmes in the field of Early Child Development for (minority) children and their parents. Learning Without Frontiers is currently setting up a project in Egypt to test and revise the methodology in another cultural setting

• LEARN Foundation, Bangladesh. The LEARN Foundation initiated the project in October 1997 with two old computers in a remote village school in Durgapasha, Sunamganj, about 40 KM from Sylhet town in the North Eastern part of Bangladesh - 250 miles from Dhaka. Once a week, on Fridays that is the official holiday in Bangladesh, the Foundation arranged computer-based instructions for children between age 10-16. The LEARN Foundation is a private non-profit charity trust, which aims to enduringly strengthen the ability of rural children in Bangladesh to acquire modern Information Technology and functional English skills through innovative network learning models. Read more on this site!

• Junior Summit. Junior Summit '98 took place from 15 to 21 November 1998 and was aimed at all children, those who use a computer on a daily basis and those who don't know what a computer is, those who struggle to exist on the margins of their society and those who receive every benefit their society has to give.

• Positive Lives. This initiative, hosted by DRIK (see other links on these pages) focuses on the human stories of those at the heart of the HIV and AIDS pandemic. Our hope is that by sharing these stories, we can face and challenge the myths and prejudices about HIV.

• La toile des Nations Unies au Gabon. Experiences of local communities using internet in Gabon can be found in the website, as well as websites developped by youth.

• Ragni Marea Kidvai. A 13 year old girl in Pakistan who publishes her poetry. She gets responses from all over the world, except India. This prompted her to ask her father, Zaheer A. Kidvai, CEO of "Enabling Technologies" and now part of 2B1, the question: "Why?" That then led her father to start setting up a web site to facilitate dialogue between children from India and Pakistan, to undo the damage done by politicians over the past 50 years to a 7500 year old culture of sharing between the now separate nation-states. The site will be launched on August 14, independence day for both Pakistan and India.

• Slide show. Photos taken by children from a primary school in Bangladesh. A view from the slums. Shahidul Alam saw what was happening, and facilitated this exiting project. Accompanying text is also available in Spanish.

• KidsHealth. KidsHealth is an exiting Web site devoted to the health of children and teens. Created by medical experts at The Nemours Foundation, KidsHealth has trainloads of information about growth, food & fi tness, childhood infections, immunizations, lab tests, medical and surgical conditions, and the latest treatments. Beware of some high tech stuff that requires recent web browsers!

• All about symbols.
  Symbols have been used throughout the ages to provide information in a simple and direct way. Different kinds of symbols have developed for different purposes. These pages are concerned with the use of pictorial symbols to support information for people who find text difficult.

• NetDay. Allows parents, children, teachers and community members to take charge of their own connectivity. It mobilizes people to investigate what happens in their school district or state. The information provided, some of which is updated on an hourly basis, prompts them to take action and provides them with suggestions on how to do so.

• Schwab foundation for learning. This website provides information and resources for parents, educators, and other professionals who are making a difference in the lives of young children with learning difficulties.

• "No Back Roads". It is very American, but also very rural. Maybe not even soo much different from the remote areas of the country you happen to live in. Read in a wide collection of stories on how the the Internet and World Wide Web are influencing rural America.

• DRIK. In September 1989, a small group of people, in an effort to change the negative portrayal of people in the developing world set up a picture library, not in the traditional locations of London, New York or Paris, but in Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh. DRIK, a Sanskrit word, stands for vision, inner vision, philosophy of vision. It was an attempt to extract at least a degree of control from the West in terms of how people in poorer nations were represented. Seven years and 85000 images later, DRIK stands tall amongst image banks in the Third World, not only in the quality or quantity of its images but through the nature of its work.

• The Learning Corps. Learning without frontiers in action. This site embodies an interesting approach to organizing a learning environment. Or is it something else? A recent initiative with intreaging ideas.

• Tapori.

  "I went to get this stone at the dam, at the place where father looks for food and clothes for us. This stone makes me think of the courage of my father. I wish that this stone could be for all the children of the world, hope, courage and good fortune."

  Moussa from Burkina Faso sent this message when he sent his little stone to Tapori. From small towns to cities and rural areas, children from many countries have been sending little stones to Tapori. these stones have a special meaning for the children, or remind them of the courage of a friend less privileged than themselves. In this and many other ways, children all over the world also contribute to build friendship and hope to overcome extreme poverty. (Also in French).