04/09/2024 | Press release | Distributed by Public on 04/09/2024 07:31
The APNIC Foundation is pleased to announce the 2024 round of the ISIF Asia grants. This year, 21 projects are being supported to enhance the Internet in the Asia Pacific, with a strong focus on inclusion and environmental initiatives. A total of USD 1,675,000 is being distributed across 17 economies.
The 11 Inclusion grants incorporate five Ian Peter Grants for the Internet and the Environment. These include a project in India that helps young Internet users understand the Internet's environmental impact and what they can do about it, projects that monitor landslides and wildfires using IoT, and a project in Indonesia to recycle batteries to create Wi-Fi hubs.
The other six inclusion projects support wider audiences accessing the Internet in various ways. These range from a cybersecurity education initiative for older Internet users in the Pacific to connectivity and education initiatives for areas affected by conflict, to e-books for children with disabilities in Bangladesh and various connectivity projects across the region.
The six infrastructure projects include four IPv6 Deployment Grants. These grants foster IPv6 uptake by supporting rural ISPs in technology adoption in Indonesia, supporting a key ISP in the Solomon Islands to make the switch to IPv6, creating detailed network maps as part of an IPv6 transition, and supporting IPv6 uptake in the Cook Islands.
The other two Infrastructure projects focus on supporting Internet Exchange Points (IXPs) in Mongolia and Myanmar, improving the efficiency of Internet traffic in these economies.
The three Knowledge projects supported this year include work to improve digital literacy in Bhutan, work to improve Research and Education Networks (RENs) in the Asia Pacific, and the development of tools to allow network operators to conduct more effective simulations to improve their network security skills.
We congratulate our 2024 ISIF Asia grantees and look forward to seeing their work come to fruition and the positive impact they will create. View the full list of grantees on the APNIC Foundation website.
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