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Bangalore is India's capital for UN’s Gesci
si Team
Thursday, September 1, 2005
Bangalore has got another ‘first’ to its credit. It has been chosen as the India headquarters for the United Nations ‘Global e-school and Communities Initiative’, a special campaign to promote the use of technology in education. The UN announced the decision on August 1, 2005. The UN decision was perhaps reinforced after the launch of Edusat by India in September 2004. It is the world’s only exclusive satellite for distance education launched by the Indian Space Research Organization. With this development Bangalore has gained global attention for distance education and hence the UN’s choice of Bangalore as headquarters for this initiative is not hard to comprehend.

Under the Gesci program, diverse educational and community development projects and best practices for academia will be developed in Bangalore for the benefit of all countries. Gesci is expected to assist India to achieve the goal of primary education for all by 2010, five years ahead of the UN deadline stated in the Millennium Development Goals.

The UN Information Communication Technology Task Force established the Gesci initiative in 2003. The role of ICT in education is limited by the absence of content development and means of taking advantage of the wide range of devices available. For example, while it is technically possible to combine satellite technology with memory and audio devices to create libraries containing relevant educational materials for rural areas in developing countries, such technology has not yet been utilized in the context of education.

The Gesci initiative therefore seeks to build partnerships between the ICT, media and the entertainment industries in order to find ways to put existing technology to educational purposes. The impact of which is expected to go beyond the classroom, yielding enormous benefits to local communities in the form of employment, adult education, health, business services, communication and e-government.

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