The Third Annual Baramati Initiative on ICT and Development is a meeting ground to explore ways in which information and communication technology is being used as a tool to empower the poor. The meeting will emphasize the role of social entrepreneurs that are effectively using ICT in opening new market-driven avenues for the poor to participate in e-government, e-commerce, and e-education.

The Event is a Learning Opportunity for Participants to:

• Interact directly with grassroots partners of these efforts i.e., people that are using this technology and hear from them how ICT has made a difference in their lives
• Meet and interact with individuals and organizations that are financing these efforts
• Learn about new efforts via exhibit and demonstration booths

Event Profile:

REALITY CHECK FOR TEACHERS, LOVERS, WRITERS, AND LOVERS OF LANGUAGE.

A thoughtful and provocative quote from educator John Holt (1923-1985) from How Children Learn: We teachers - perhaps all human beings - are in the grip of an astonishing delusion. We think that we can take a picture, a structure, a working knowledge of something, constructed in our minds out of long experience and familiarity, and by turning that model into a string of words, transplant it whole into the mind of someone else. Perhaps once in a thousand times, when the explanation is extraordinarily good, and the listener extraordinarily experienced and skillful at turning word-strings into non-verbal reality, and when the explainer and listener share in common many of the experiences being talked about, the process may work, and some real meaning may be communicated. Most of the time, explaining does not increase understanding, and may even lessen it.

[How to Save the World]

Two more favourite thoughts immediately spring to mind :

"The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift."Albert Einstein