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Left to right: ITU Secretary-General Hamadoun I. Touré;
Sports Manager at Evian Masters Golf Club Christine Lagarde, and Director of ITU’s Telecommunication Development Bureau Sami Al Basheer Al Morshid
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Teeing off to help connect communities
From the lush fairways and manicured greens of golf clubs, it can be easy to lose sight of the disparity between the world’s “haves” and the “have-nots”. One of the most important gaps concerns access to information and communication technologies (ICT), which can have a tremendous impact on a community’s development. Helping to close this gap was the target of the International Day of Charity Golf on 21 June 2008.
The day is a Geneva-based initiative that encourages golfers around the world to help people "get out of the rough" and back on course for success. It is an initiative of the International Golf Associates Franco-Suisse Chapter in cooperation with the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, and the United Nations Women’s Guild of Geneva. Since its creation in 2003, the International Day of Charity Golf has assisted in raising funds for targeted development projects through golf competitions. The funds raised at this year’s event will go towards the establishment of women-led telecentres in Africa.
The telecentres will provide local communities with telephone and fax services, Internet connectivity, e-mail and a host of ICT applications, to boost education, health, agriculture, e-commerce, and small and medium-sized enterprises. They will also provide government and local information services, radio and television, as well as offer training in computer skills.
... read more
(ITU News 2008 issue N° 6 - pdf)
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