Connecting People-Changing Lives in Asia

Distance education and health services: helping communities realize their dreams.

Distance technologies using ICTs have long been an important method for reaching remote populations with educational and other services that would otherwise be inaccessible and unaffordable. This is true of both developed countries like Canada and developing countries in Asia. Distance education reaches people who cannot attend conventional educational institutions owing to their distance from the institution, poverty, family obligations, job, gender discrimination, farming requirements, and other reasons. The advent of the Internet and other ICTs has so changed the paradigm for delivering distance education and health services, that PAN has been focusing on providing support to institutions across Asia to re-examine new ICT-based ways to deliver these services. PAN's innovative projects are reaching disadvantaged populations, influencing policy, and building a base for progressing from development to research in this critical sector.

This chapter describes PAN's recent projects to deliver distance education and health services in Bhutan, Indonesia, Mongolia, the Philippines, and Viet Nam. We also discuss the network's current approach to funding distance-education projects via a unique, collaborative approach known as PANdora.

To read more, click http://www.idrc.ca/IMAGES/ICT4D/PanAsia/PAN/chap6.html