Training Young Minds via Satellite

South Africa

When Mindset Network of South Africa won the 2006 Development Gateway Award, it was already well established as a leader in providing high-quality multimedia educational content. It had installed receivers for its satellite-based delivery system in more than 1,500 schools and 300 hospitals and clinics. Mindset had created educational content on subjects such as HIV/AIDS, TB, and child survival for the health sector and science, math, IT, and English for schools. It made this content further available to over 1.5 million homes via satellite broadcast.

Accepting the award, Lusanda Jiya, business development and marketing executive of Mindset Network, said, "In South Africa, the government’s objective is to halve poverty and unemployment by 2014, and Mindset intends to play its part." Since then, Mindset has bolstered its operations in South Africa to other rural areas in the Gauteng and North West provinces.

The award was used to provide additional computers and printers to teachers in the North West province, allowing them to plan their lessons using Mindset content that they could download and print on their own time. In the Gauteng region, the majority of the funds was used to provide follow-up visits and educator training to 100 schools of the Thuthuka Gauteng Project, which focuses on increasing the capacity of schools to provide better skills training.

The purpose of the award was to raise awareness of the positive effect information and communications technologies can have on people’s lives in developing countries. Joint 2006 Nobel Peace Prize winner Muhammad Yunus and Grameen Bank (Bangladesh) won the award in 2004. The award recipient in 2005 was eChoupal, a program of ITC Limited, of India.