The Vodafone Foundation set to partner with Educate A Child to provide mobile education initiatives for young children in refugee camps. The Vodafone Foundation today signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with the Educate A Child (EAC) Programme that was launched in November 2012 to bring quality primary education to millions of out of school children. The Vodafone Foundation’s Instant Network, a mobile network which packs in to three suitcases, and as part of this MOU, would be deployed in refugee camps around the world by a team of 70 Vodafone volunteer engineers. The programme will provide network support, mobile education applications and tools to enable the delivery of effective mobile-based educational programmes by selected NGOs. This will also include access to mobile education resources, such as mobile literacy programmes. The MOU, witnessed by Her Highness Sheikha Moza bint Nasser, was signed at a High-level Strategic Meeting in Doha focused on accelerating progress towards attaining the second Millennium Development Goal of universal primary education by the end of 2015. Present for the signing were Vodafone Qatar’s CEO Mr Richard Daly and External Affairs Director Mr Mohammed Al Yami. The MOU was signed by Dr Tidu Maini, Exective Committee member of Qatar Foundation Endowment and EAC Special Envoy and Vodafone Group External Affairs Director and Trustee of the Vodafone Foundation Mr Matthew Kirk. Commenting on the partnership, Mr Kirk said, “The average stay of a child in a refugee camp is 9 years. There is an urgent need to increase the access of children within such camps to better education, improve their learning prospects and as a result, their future. Therefore, we are delighted to be partnering with Educate a Child in expanding Vodafone Foundation’s Instant Network programme to support the provision of mobile education initiatives in targeted refugee camps. This combines the best of our technology, using the Learn with Vodafone solution from India and the mobile web tools from the Egypt literacy programme with the innovative Instant Network” Ms Mary Joy Pigozzi, Director of Educate A Child said, “We are delighted to be working with the Vodafone Foundation because of the rich wealth of experience and expertise they have in mobile education initiatives. EAC has supported over 600,000 out of school children into learning in its first months of operation. We are confident that by building this new level of collaboration, with partners such as the Vodafone Foundation, we will be able to reach millions more in the coming years.” Following the signature of this memorandum of understanding, the partners are finalising details of a full partnership agreement, which is expected to be signed in the coming months. - ILQ News -

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