IDG News Service,
Buenos Aires Bureau
BUENOS AIRES –
On a brief visit devoted to fund-raising for the educational
portal Educ.ar, US former President Bill Clinton said that information
technology offers an unprecedented opportunity for developing countries for
solving problems such as education, health and economy in a much shorter time
than before.
Clinton spoke to an audience of about 600 people at the
recently opened Buenos Aires Hilton Hotel. About half of them paid a minimum of
US$1,000 or donated a computer for the country schools. Only about $250,000
were raised at the event, of which about $120,000 plus expenses were paid to
the visitor, according to unofficial reports. The event was organized by the
Varsavsky Foundation, on behalf of the Argentine portal Educ.ar, devoted to
serving educational contents to the Argentine school system.
"This age will be defined not (as the era of) global
economics, or even as the explosion of information technology, or the advances
in biological sciences, or the dramatic increase in social diversity and
complexity, but as the human consequence of all these events, which is the
greatest interdependence within and beyond national borders in all of human
history (...) What happens in Argentina affects a lot of people in
America."
Clinton
advocated for enabling access to the Internet and information technologies for
the poor, arguing that although this costs money, it will be more costly later on
if we have countries that are poorer and with no education.
Clinton
reminded that during his administration the percentage of American schools
connected to the Internet jumped from 14 percent to 95 percent. In Argentina,
only about 5 per cent of elementary schools have some sort of Internet
connection, and only about 16 percent of secondary schools. The funds raised at
the event will be devoted to connecting more schools in poor districts and
provinces to the Internet in Argentina.
Finally,
Clinton touted that the Argentine government emphasized the training of
teachers in the new technologies before sending computers to the schools. He
said that in America they did the other way round, and they found that often
the machines gathered dust in lockers, just because the teachers did not know
what to do with them, lacking basic computer training.
Later on the
visitor had lunch with Argentine President Fernando de la Rúa at the
presidential residence at a Buenos Aires suburb. In the evening, Clinton flew
to the Brazilian financial capital, São Paulo.
Educ.ar is a semi-official educational portal initially funded by an 11 million dollars donation from the Argentine entrepreneur resident in Spain Martín Varsavsky, founder of the Jazztel Group, a holding of communication and Internet companies led by Jazztel p.l.c. (NASDAQ, Easdaq: JAZZ).
The Varsavsky Foundation is at http://www.varsavsky-foundation.net/
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