GILAS

You may have read about the Ayala Foundation in the book we had distributed at Tunis from the UN Global Task Force. The foundation has a new initiative, called GILAS.

GILAS is an acronym for Gearing-up Internet Literacy and Access for students. It is a project initiated by a group of private companies, and aimed at providing an Internet lab for each of the 5,443 public high schools in the Philippines.

The Philippines spends approximately $64 per student per annum on secondary education; quite low compared to approximately $7,500 that the US spends, and $5,000 for Singapore. The Philippines ' huge budget deficit and the country's myriad of needs make it difficult for the government to increase its education spending. The lack of spending manifests itself in the lack of classrooms and teachers, poorly trained teachers, underdeveloped curricula and practically non-existent libraries.

GILAS editorial