SOLOY Community Technology
& Learning Center Honoer & Grants

2005 Microsoft® Curriculum

Microsoft® has provided the Mona Foundation with its Unlimited Potential Curriculum to be used in our technology labs in the CTLC, Ruaha, and ADCAM. This curriculum will allow our schools to offer Information Technology Certification programs. The full curriculum includes these IT skills: Computer fundamentals, Database fundamentals, Digital Media fundamentals, Internet and WWW fundamentals, Presentation fundamentals, Spreadsheet fundamentals, Web design fundamentals, and Word processing fundamentals. Besides these sequential learnings, Microsoft® has a site with several specific 30-50 minute long modules on specific aspects of each of the Microsoft® products.

2005 New $12,000 Training Grant

In the Spring of 2005 Microsoft® Panama approved a $12,000 grant to support the teachers and training to be continued in the computer lab at Soloy. Microsoft® usually awards only one-time grants and not training grants to follow them. This is a most unusual honor. We have now learned that the training in the computer lab can continue for both Adan and Tahirih, specifically for two more years for Adan to become fully qualified as a technical trainer. Currently Adan and Tahirih are being trained in a 20-hour course in basic accounting for five weeks.

2003 Microsoft® Vision

This advertorial was placed by Microsoft® in the New York Times OP-ED page, December 10, 2003, and in the Washington Post, December 11, 2003.

In the remote mountains of western Panama, indigenous people known as the Ngöbe-Buglé live today much as they have for centuries: scratching out a bare subsistence in the rainforest, with little access to formal education or modern technology. But that is beginning to change.

During the past nine years, basic schools have been established in eight villages, with unpaid local volunteers conducting classes in both Spanish and the Ngöbere language. Now the Ngöbe-Buglé are gaining access to 21st-century technology.

Last month, a Community Technology and Learning Center was opened, equipped with 15 solar-powered computers. Two local people have been hired and trained to staff the center and provide computer-skills education to students, teachers and villagers. One of the center's goals is to provide teachers with access to continuing education that will enhance student learning and enable the volunteer teachers to qualify for government certification and pay.

The center resulted from a collaboration by Microsoft® with local authorities and two small philanthropies, the Foundation for Development and Culture, based in Panama, and the Mona Foundation in the United States. Microsoft®'s involvement is part of our new Unlimited Potential initiative to build technology skills among disadvantaged individuals and communities aroudn the world—through lifelong learning.

Today the world economy is increasingly driven by innovation and ideas. Global economic progress depends on strengthening workforce skills for increased productivity of more complex, high-value goods and services. Technological advancements require that workers continue to update, broaden and hone their skills, or risk them becoming obsolete. Yet, for many people there is no easy way to gain new skills, particularly after they leave school.

Microsoft is trying to help bridge the technology skills gap. Our goal is to make lifelong learning a reality for people and communities in the United States and around the world.

Our efforts are focused both inside and outside the classroom. We are partnering with schools in more than 70 countries to empower teachers, particularly in the neediest schools, by helping them get the latest computer technologies at the lowest possible cost, and offering them the training they need to make the most of those technologies.

Beyond the classroom, we are supporting technology-related skills training for disadvantaged young people and adults through community-based learning centers. We are committing $1 billion in cash and software over the next five years to enhance existing centers and establish new ones where they are most needed.

The importance of this effort was demonstrated in Panama last month as 500 excited students, teachers, parents and dignitaries gathered to celebrate the opening of the new computer center on the Ngöbe-Buglé reserve. Many had walked for hours through torrential rains to attend. Said one student, "This gives us a completely new outlook and a new vision of what is possible."

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2003 World Summit

The Mona Foundation participates at the World Summit on Information Society in Geneva, Switzerland, December 2003

Microsoft® has invited the Mona Foundation to attend the World Summit on Information Society to be held in Switzerland with 12,000 people, to present on CTLC in Ngobe Bugle among other projects, and they have granted us $8,000.00 for expenses and brochures. The stunning thrill of such recognition of the efforts of this small Foundation soared our spirits and welded our hearts with an amazing new vision of the impact of our work.

Our representatives to the summit, Rosemary Baily and Judy Rector, share their thoughts in this report on this momentous experience.

The experience of sharing a very active week at the World Summit of the Information Society, WSIS, was nothing less than awe-inspiring. Groups from every continent have shared their unique attire, enterprises, experiences and expectations with willing listeners. Most attendees came to exchange information with government representatives, community groups and civil society programs, scientific representatives, and the public sector. The World Summit in Geneva 2003 and Tunis 2005 address a broad scope of issues surrounding the development of the information society globally and the potential of ICTs, information and communication technologies, to contribute to the development of poverty alleviation.

"Information and communication technologies are the driving forces of globalization with great potential to help people improve their lives," Mr. Kofi Annan said at his opening speech at the Summit. We saw this in action as participants shared with passion and dedication the focus of their purpose in attending. Several major global targets appeared to emerge: to ensure that by 2015 at the latest, more than half the world's inhabitants have ICT's within their reach; that ICT's are brought to all educational, medical and scientific establishments; to connect public places, to revise school curricula, to extend the reach of TV and radio broadcasting services, and to facilitate and use the different languages of the world on the Internet.

People were drawn to our area, we believe, by the Microsoft® name, which is prominent worldwide. Once there, the fourteen projects were showcased under their program entitled Unlimited Potential. These projects focused on improving lifelong learning for underserved young people and adults by providing technology skills through CTLCs, community technology and learning centers. Most were intrigued by the solar powered lab and the future wireless connectivity aspect of the Centre in the Ngobe Bugle area. When they heard about Mona's 97% return-to-projects of donation money and the fact that we operate mainly with volunteers, they were doubly impressed. We have compiled a long contact file, including businesses, other NGOs, Non-Government Organizations, and individuals who expressed sincere interest in partnering with the Foundation in various ways.

Microsoft® Grants Mona $106,800 for a
Community Technology & Learning Center

Ngobe-Bugle area of Chiriqui, Panama

Mona Foundation and FUNDESCU are extremely grateful to Microsoft Panama for their support of this unique initiative, and acknowledge the indispensable assistance of Mr. Rene van Hoorde, General Manager of Microsoft, of Mr. Luis Carlos Stoute who was instrumental in promoting this initiative, and of Mrs. Carolina Donkersloot, Director of Community Affairs, without whose confidence this project would not have happened.

To further the educational opportunities of these very under-served yet capable people, Mona Foundation partnered with FUNDESCO and proposed establishment of 15 solar-powered computers in the Ngobe Bugle area of Chiriqui Province.

The Mona Foundation proposal suggested that the indigenous population of Ngobe Bugle and all the schools serving them, or the high school in Soloy, a town within 15 minutes of the Cultural Center, have absolutely no access to technology, nor they do they hope to have access any time soon. This computer lab, the first in any indigenous region in Panama, will be open to public and will offer this under-served population an opportunity to leap frog to the 21st century, to access communication and networking benefits of technology, and to further develop their human resources in the service of their people.

Microsoft® generously agreed, and notified the Mona Foundation and FUNDESCU on June 4, 2003 of its generous cash grant of $106,800 and software grant of approximately $17,000.00.

Mona Foundation is of course extremely pleased by this vote of confidence by Microsoft® Corporation. To implement this ambitious plan, Mona Foundation has closely collaborated with FUNDESCU, Microsoft® Panama, Microsoft® Redmond, the Indigenous National Council, the Ministry of Education, and myriad of other individuals.

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