GILAS: Providing Youth with Technology & Internet Access

1. Help advance Philippine public education by investing in providing PCs, internet connectivity, and PC training to Philippine public schools.

Education - Elementary and Secondary

GILAS is a movement and a coalition of companies and people dedicated to advancing public education in the Philippines by providing PCs, internet connectivity, and hardware/software training to teachers and students in Philippine public high schools.

GILAS is spearheaded by the Ayala Foundation, and is a coalition of people and companies like IBM, Microsoft, Intel, Globe Telecom, PLDT, etc., to address a critical problem in Philippine education: the lack of IT access and training, and the inadequacy of Internet connectivity in the Philippine public high school system.

Today, less than 10% of Philippine public high schools are connected to the Internet. In contrast, virtually 100% of public schools in Korea, Taiwan, Singapore and Hong Kong are wired to the Internet. To become part of a global society, Filipino youth need to be connected to information, as well as be empowered to create information.

GILAS aims to wire all 5,500 Philippine public high schools to the Internet within 5 years.

Total project cost is US $28 million, which includes hardware, software and training. GILAS is reaching out to all friends of the Philippines and to the Philippine expatriate community worldwide to support this cause and to help raise the funds for this project.