Delivery of User-Ready Web Network to Montenegro Continues WiRED's Balkans Effort
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WiRED announced the delivery on May 30 in Montenegro of 90, Internet-ready computers to be distributed and installed at eight
schools in six cities in Montenegro. Montenegro, along with Serbia, comprises the former Yugoslavia. The project was accepted
and endorsed by the government of Montenegro and placed under the Ministry of Education.
The installation of the WiRED Internet Access Centers in Montenegro is expected to be completed before the beginning of the Fall
school term. The project continues the Balkans regional effort begun in 1997 in Croatia and extended to Bosnia-Herzogovina,
Kosovo and Albania during the past two years. The regional network provides Internet Access Centers usually in public schools.
Each Center consists of 10-12 computers and is operated by local teachers and technicians. In addition to use by students, the
centers are, by agreement, made available at no charge during non-school hours to local professionals, academics, business
persons and average citizens. WiRED provides complete training and follow-up assistance for center managers and participating
teachers.
According to Dr. Gary Selnow, director of WiRED and a professor at San Francisco State University, "The bottom line is to provide
people with the means of obtaining information and communicating beyond their own borders to permit and encourage participation
in mainstream economic, social and political life. WiRED's role is to provide the resources and the operational know-how, then
allow the local people to shape the resources to fit their needs.
"Though we're pleased that the Balkans effort has been successful," Selnow concluded, "...our work is hardly finished." The
Montenegrin project represents fewer than half the schools in the country. Equipping other centers will require additional
funding and we're working on that now."
WiRED recently joined with another U.S.-based nonprofit organization, Global Strategies for AIDS Prevention, to establish
computer-driven, Health Information Centers with a view toward heightening the dissemination of AIDS prevention information
in those countries hardest hit by the disease. More recently, WiRED has made arrangements to establish a test center in Leon,
Nicaragua to assist people disabled by land mines and other causes. Depending on the outcome of this test, WiRED has plans to
extend the program to other Central American countries.
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