SAF MISSION

At the dawn of the third Millennium, an extraordinary technological revolution is unfolding in our planet which is radically changing the way human beings live, communicate, develop interests, learn, research, produce and trade. This revolution, dramatically illustrated by the development of the Internet, is rapid, massive, permanent and unending in all aspects of life in the developed world. It is the vehicle of the current transition from the Industrial Age, based on capital and labour, to the Information Age, based on knowledge and communication. It has had an extraordinary impact on the new generations in the West. Computers and the Internet have now brought about an explosion of perspectives for tens of millions of children and youth who can use this new medium and technology as a natural part of their daily lives in order to realize their full potential.

In contrast, this gigantic process is sharply accentuating the gap between the developed and the developing countries by producing a deeply uneven and divided world of the digital haves and the digital have nots, with its striking consequences in terms of global inequality in the years ahead. The great majority of the world population, living in the countries essentially deprived of information technology, will pay a high price in their economic, social and cultural development in the increasingly global competition in the new century. There is, however, a major difference with the past. Information technology, in particular the Internet, has created for the first time in human history an empowering tool to eradicate effectively the roots of underdevelopment. The basic precondition is to make the new technology available and integrated consistently at an early age in the education of the hundreds of millions of the children in the third world.

The Science and Art Foundation (SAF), which was set up as an educational non-profit-making charity on 1st March 1999, aspires for such an ideal future world. It believes that progress in education, communication, research and development based on information technology and the Internet in the third world is the vital key to solving the developmental problems in the third world as well as the global and regional problems facing humanity. SAF also maintains that the globalization of all human activities, exemplified by the applications of the Internet, has prepared the ground for a worldwide campaign to equip the younger generations of the developing world with the new and empowering information technologies enjoyed by the youth in the West. By acting now, this vision is within our reach.