Though the members of our community hail from many different backgrounds, we all seek to eliminate the digital divide and empower all as full citizens and contribute to building up Open Knowledge for the benefit of the whole society and for our future generations. We would to like to thank all educators worldwide who have made contributions to open education efforts and being good global citizens by helping spread the benefits of education to all.
Service for the benefit and betterment of humanity is a key fundamental principle of “Geo for All” and we want to contribute and focus our efforts for the United Nations Millennium Development Goals. In order to achieve UN Millennium Development Goals it is essential to develop infrastructure facilities, strengthen the muncipal authorities and local city government organisations worldwide for helping improving the living standards of the people. GIS is fundamental technology in infrastructure development and high cost proprietary GIS is unaffordable to governments, town planners and local authorities in developing and economically poor countries. With the availability of free and open source GIS technologies it now offers a great opportunity for governments and municipal authorities in developing countries also to implement GIS tools for their decision making and implementation needs (without having to pay huge licencing costs to proprietary GIS vendors) and help improving the lives of some of the most poorest people and by giving the geospatial tools to the municipal authorities for their decision making and implementation needs will help in improving the living standards of the people. We need to empower people and communities to make sure our future generations are fully empowered .Thanks to our Geo4All colleagues globally, we have already seen many examples of the potential of Geo technologies in empowering communities and helping improving the lives of some of the most poorest people . By capacity building staff and students and by providing the geospatial tools to the municipal authorities for their infrastructure upgradation programs etc ( which in the long term will result in providing clean water, proper sanitation and hygiene facilities, electricity etc) will help in improving the living standards of the people.
Thanks to the unique convergence of some key developments (hardware costs will keep decreasing, internet access will keep increasing even in developing and poor countries, availability of free and open source software, open education resources etc.), we are in the first time in history truly have a real opportunity for making quality education opportunities accessible for all. There many examples in our GeoForAll community from gvSIG Batovi in Uruguay to GIS at Schools in Poland have proved that it is possible if we have the will power and determination. Access to quality education and opportunities is key for getting rid of extreme poverty and enable broadly shared prosperity for all. GeoForAll aims to welcome ideas from the wider community on how we can work together for building global synergies and collaborations for enabling this even for the poorest and remotest schools worldwide to enable quality education opportunities for all. We welcome everyone interested to join synergies and work together to support open principles in geoeducation and enable Geo technologies in empowering communities and helping improving the Quality of Life and standards of living for everyone. Let us all work together to help create a world that is more accessible, equitable and full of innovation and opportunities for everyone.
We welcome Governments, Industry, Industry, SME’s , NGOs etc who support Geo4All’s education mission and criteria to join us as “Partners” and be part of a global network of Open Geospatial Science Research and Education ‘Labs’ and ‘Partners’ to expand more collaborations for the future. Geo4All started from humble backgrounds and it is 100 percent the dedication and efforts of all our colleagues globally which helped us. We are grateful to all our colleagues globally for their help and efforts which enabled us to build this initiative.
We look forward to working and building collaborations with all interested on this education mission. Access to quality education and opportunities is key for getting rid of extreme poverty and enable broadly shared prosperity for all. We look forward to working and building collaborations with all interested on this open education mission.
