Quezon City is now the biggest fully connected city in Luzon, thanks to support from its local government, corporate and individual donors, volunteers, and partners. GILAS is Ayala Foundation’s program that seeks to engage the greater community in providing Filipino students with access to a wealth of information available on the Internet.
It hails Quezon City as an area that exemplifies its multi-sectoral nature due to funding from Credit Suisse First Boston, Ayala Land, Rocking Moon Foundation, Carlos A. Cordeiro Foundation, Fil-Am groups and alumni associations, and several private individuals – which was matched by funding from the office of Mayor Sonny Belmonte.
Computers from the Department of Trade and Industry’s PCs for Public Schools project and Asian Development Bank were given a year’s free broadband Internet subscription from by BayanTel Communications to complete the package in Quezon City schools. Volunteers from HSBC, and Philippine Business for Social Progress conducted training programs for teachers and computer instructors on basic maintenance, and content integration with core subjects such as math, science and English.
Department of Education superintendents, school principals, administrators, faculty, staff, and Parent Teacher Associations lend their active support to the project by incorporating computer and Internet learning into their core curricula, and by finding the means to sustain the school’s Internet subscription after the first year of free connection has ended.
Out of 5,789 public high schools in the Philippines, GILAS has so far connected 1,124, and would like to congratulate all its partners and supporters in being instrumental in the project’s success. GILAS looks forward to providing Internet connectivity to all public high schools by 2010.