Education and healthcare are basic needs, fundamental for human development. The main goal of the proposed Fund and Coalition is to expand educational opportunities and improve health in developing countries by enabling these countries to:  

• Make full use of electronic distance education and telemedicine.  

• Participate actively in data-intensive and media-intensive exchanges with both developed countries and other developing countries.  

• Participate interactively and fully in joint research, professional development, and knowledge-building activities with institutions and organizations in other countries.  

To do this, steps must be taken to:

• Reduce the cost of broadband connectivity to a level poor countries can afford.

• Create policy and regulatory frameworks conducive to the development of sustainable distance education and telemedicine programs.

• Establish high-quality applications in sufficient developing country sites to demonstrate technical feasibility, increase demand, and build support for more extensive use of such technologies in developing country contexts.

The first draft of this proposal was developed by Dr. Takeshi Utsumi, Chairman of the GLOSAS/USA and presented at the International Workshop and Conference on Emerging Global Electronic Distance Learning (EGEDL'99) held August 9th - 13th, 1999 at the University of Tampere, Finland. The conference conclusions included a recommendation to work for the establishment of the Fund and the Coalition. 

Subsequently a working group was formed at a meeting held at the Pan American Health Organization in December 1999 to further develop the proposal and include policy conditionality. That working group presented its proposal at the inaugural meeting of the Arthur C. Clark Institute for Telecommunications and Information (CITI), held at Intelsat headquarters in Washington, DC on 5 February 2000. A later version was presented at a TechNet seminar held at the World Bank on 19 November 2000.

A new and expanded version of the proposal is now available.  

Three projects prepared by Peter Knight and his collaborators which might be submitted to the GSTF are Canal Futura Africano (a 24-hour-a day Portuguese language educational TV service for Africa), Conversion of Zimbabwe Open University to Decentralized Web-Based Learning, and Satellite Web-Based Delivery for the South Institute of Information Technology.

Here are some photos from the CITI Conference.

Arthur C. Clarke addresses the CITI Founders' Conference by Video from Sri Lanka

Peter Knight presents the GSTF proposal to the Conference

Takeshi Utsumi makes a point to the breakout session discussing the GSTF proposal

See some more photos from the Conference and preparatory dinner.

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