Reliance ADA group allies with OLPC Foundation

MUMBAI, INDIA: Reliance Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group today announced its collaboration with One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) Foundation, a global alliance to promote e-learning for children.

Under the initiative, Reliance ADA Group’s flagship company Reliance Communications would provide internet connectivity, network backbone, logistic and support to the OLPC initiative in India, using its network that would cover over 25,000 towns and 6,00,000 Indian villages by March 2008.

"Children are the future of the nation and shaping the future of millions of school children through new age learning systems is of prime importance in today’s digital era. The IT and ITeS revolution over the last decade has brought India at the forefront of leading emerging economies; the next leap forward necessitates that the existing digital divide between urban and rural India is bridged at the earliest”, said Tina Anil Ambani, while announcing the landmark collaboration.

"The ethos of Reliance Group and the vision of OLPC Project, to enable 150mn school children across the world, gel perfectly. We are glad to be in a unique position to be a part of this initiative to provide children in India with new opportunities to explore, experiment and express," she added.

Tina Anil Ambani also announced the launch of OLPC’s first pilot in India under which school children in a tribal village at Khairat (near Karjat, Maharashtra) have been provided with OLPC XO laptops and teacher training for incorporating the new way of imparting education.

Reliance Communications is providing the connectivity to these Internet learning devices. OLPC has already provided laptops to 5mn schoolchildren across the world and aims to cover150 mn schoolchildren by 2008. Leading global corporates like AMD, Google, News Corp., Nortel, eBay, Citigroup, Seagate, Adobe, etc. have partnered in setting up the OLPC Foundation, backed by United Nations