1.3 billion children have no access to the Internet at home and only around half of the world’s schools are online. This digital exclusion particularly affects the poorest, girls and those with disabilities; causing learners to miss out on the resources online, the option to learn remotely (e.g., during pandemics or instability), and the opportunity to develop digital skills. UNICEF and ITU have therefore joined forces to create Giga, an initiative to connect every school in the world to the Internet and address this new form of inequality.
What Giga Does:
• It maps schools’ Internet access. Giga’s Project Connect map provides a real-time display of access and need for funders, governments, and accountability. Giga has mapped over 2.1 million schools in 53 countries.
• It creates models for innovative financing. It could cost $428 billion or more to connect every school. Giga aims to mobilize $5 billion to catalyze investment in connectivity infrastructure.
• Giga helps governments design the regulatory frameworks and competitive procurement processes needed to get schools online.
Support the Giga initiative with a generous donation:
• $25 can provide 10 GB of mobile data for digital learning
• $50 can provide 40 hours’ of instructional videos to students on mobile devices
• $100 can provide a school with one week of a fixed wireless connection
• $500 can provide a school with two months of electricity
Dell Technologies matches donations dollar for dollar – up to $10,000 annually per employee.
