The Eurasia Foundation, a privately managed, nonprofit grant-making organization established in 1993 with financing from USAID, considers electronic communications to be "one of the most effective means of information exchange in the modern world, and therefore an important tool for promoting democracy and building a civil society in the former Soviet Union."

Last October, the Foundation’s Kyiv Regional Office launched a widely advertised grant competition to improve electronic communication capabilities in the Western NIS. The Foundation requested grant proposals from any non-commercial organizations (including universities, institutes, schools, libraries, NGOs, and government agencies at the district, city, and oblast levels) for projects which would:

• establish connectivity and increase the number of users of electronic mail and the Internet;
• create new, and expand existing, information resources on the Internet, particularly in local languages;
• provide training in the use of electronic communication and its available resource networks.

• National University "Kyiv Mohyla Academy": to create an educational center for training representatives from high schools, research institutes, scientific corporations, and non-government and state organizations in Internet information technology.

• Odessa Polytechnic Institute: to develop a computer network for 14 Odessa secondary schools which will acquaint 1,700 ninth and tenth graders with the Internet.

• Republican Palace of Culture of the Belarus Society of the Deaf (Minsk): to establish a communication center and four regional stations for the district branches of the Belarus Society of the Deaf. More than 15,000 people in Minsk and regional centers will gain access to electronic information resources.

• Belarus Library Association (Minsk): to create information services of the Belarus Library Association (BLA) for the maintenance of a BBS at Belarusan libraries and to put information about BLA activities on international computer networks.

• Moldovan Academy of Economic Knowledge (Chisinau): to provide equipment for 12 LAN servers at the Academy and to develop training in Internet usage for more than 900 faculty and students.

The Eurasia Foundation
Kyiv Regional Office
vul. Khreshchatyk 15, k.4
252001 Kyiv
Tel/fax: (380) 44-229-7521
Tel: (380) 44-230-2677
E-mail: [email protected]

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The URL for this page is: http://solar.rtd.utk.edu/~ccsi/csew/96-05/grntawrd.htm
Last updated: August 2, 1996

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