Giga has been focused on connecting every school to the internet.  GIGA is UNICEF-ITU global initiative to connect every school to the Internet and every young person to information, opportunity, and choice.

Giga expressed: “To connect every young person to the Internet and to a lifetime of opportunity, we need to MapEverySchool – and we have now mapped 1 million schools.”

The map of the connected schools is available in projectconnect unicef.

Aya Miyaguchi, Executive Director Ethereum Foundation expressed:  I first couldn’t believe no one had mapped all schools, but it’s actually not easy without appropriate plans and tools. Congrats for the tremendous achievement.

Chris Fabian expressed:  Today is a big day. Our team Gigaconnect reached a “1,000,000 milestone” mapping of 1m schools. (~5M left to map). Without knowing where and how connected the schools are we can’t connect the rest, or target investments in last-mile infra well.

I think the next few million will be easier. Now, we’re picking up speed in building the open source products thanks to support from Elon Musk, Ericsson, DubaiCares, Arm, and so many data partners, Mapbox, ComuNICbr, mlab, ActualHQ, development seed, GSMA, and Maxar.

Long time (3 yrs?) since Greg Wyler said, “if you’re mapping them all why not make them green if they’ve got good connectivity, yellow if meh, and red if none. In real-time” Crazy/impossible enough for naroanaiz and team, SarajacobsCA, ranzHer, kim dohyung, mikefabrikant to try.

For clarity, Giga was launched in 2019 and it was all set to provide connectivity to every school in the world. Giga will bring the power of meaningful connectivity to fast track young people’s access to educational resources and opportunities.

Giga will ensure every child is equipped with the digital public goods they need, and will be empowered to shape the future they want.

Giga serves as a platform to create the infrastructure needed to provide digital connectivity to an entire country, for every community, and for every citizen.

It is about using schools to identify demand for connectivity, as well as using schools as an analogy for learning and connecting where the community can come together and support its next generation in a world where we are all increasingly digital, where the skills that are required are not formal ones, necessarily, and where learning happens continuously.

UNICEF works in some of the world’s toughest places, to reach the world’s most disadvantaged children. To save their lives. To defend their rights. To help them fulfill their potential.

Across 190 countries and territories, UNICEF works for every child, everywhere, every day, to build a better world for everyone.