NY Life fnd to fund digital equaliser in India

New York, June 29: The American India Foundation (AIF) announced that it has received a one-year 100,000 dollar grant from the New York Life Foundation to finance the opening of 32 digital equaliser centres in a number of underserved communities across India.

AIF is a leading international development organisation aiming to accelerate social and economic change in India while the Max New York Life, the New York Life Foundation's joint venture, is one of the leading private life insurers in India and currently operates 165 offices in 120 cities.

''This grant from New York Life will provide students with the tools they need to be competitive in the workforce today,'' AIF president Lata Krishnan said.

The digital equaliser centres would provide technology that would enhance the quality of education offered by the public school system. It was targeted to reach the most marginalised children across India, she added.

The New York Life Foundation was proud to fund those new technology centres and support AIF's mission to improve the quality of education for children in India, New York Life Foundation president Christine Park said, in a statement released yesterday.

''We are pleased to fund a program that's proven to be effective and offers long-term economic and social benefits,'' she added.

The funds will establish two full-service digital equaliser centres in Lucknow, 15 large-scale centres in Punjab, eight centres in Bhubaneshwar and seven centres in Rajasthan.

The centres will be established in middle and high schools and they will cater to students between the ages of 12 and 15.

Every centre will be equipped with eight to ten multimedia computers (one computer for every 40 students). School administrators, teachers and students will also be trained in various programme applications.

AIF will support each centre for three years and help the schools develop funding sources that will ensure the centres' future sustainability.

In 2004, the Taleem Research Foundation, an independent evaluator, assessed the effectiveness of the digital equaliser programme. Data was collected at 46 schools in Bangalore, Chennai, Hyderabad, Kolkata and Mumbai through questionnaires distributed to students, teachers, principals, school administrators and city coordinators.

The findings indicated that schools with digital equaliser centres had experienced a decrease in school dropout rates, improved exam scores and better teamwork among students.

Fifteen hundred digital equaliser centres have been set up in 13 states since 2001. They have trained about 7,000 teachers and more than 250,000 students, developed more than 500 multimedia lessons in eight different languages and received the prestigious all-India Intel Award for ''best integration of technology in education.'' AIF was formed in 2001 under the leadership of former US President Bill Clinton, who now serves as its honorary chairman. AIF is based in the US and operates in New York and Silicon Valley . In India, it has offices in New Delhi and Bangalore.

UNI