'E-Learning for life'. (Partnerships).

The Coca-Cola Company has expanded its partnership with the United Nations system this past year, particularly in the areas of information and communications technology (ICT) education and HIV/AIDS prevention. As one innovative example, Coca-Cola has teamed up with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) to bridge the digital divide in Malaysia and launched in March 2002 the project called "E-learning for life" with the Malaysian Ministry of Education. Supporting the Malaysian Government's vision to build a knowledge-based economy, the project will bring e-learning opportunities and ICT training and access to students, teachers and local communities.

Malaysian Prime Minister Dato' Sen Dr. Mahathir Mohamad praised Coca-Cola and UNDP for an "innovative and timely initiative" that will help "many, many Malaysians to grasp the opportunities of the emerging information age". The project in Malaysia (see photograph at right) is the latest in a series of community partnerships Coca-Cola has launched in Asia to support local efforts to bridge the digital divide.

In the Philippines, Coca-Cola is partnering with the Foundation for Information Technology Education and Development in an initiative called "Coca-Cola ed.venture", which is placing ICT labs in 15 remote public high schools across the country, benefiting some 10,000 children aged 13 to 17. This programme is also providing ICT training courses for hundreds of teachers. Coca-Cola has launched similar ICT education programmes in China, Viet Nam and Australia. In China, the first "Coca-Cola e-learning centre" was opened in a primary school on the outskirts of Beijing.

A nationwide project run in partnership with the China Youth Development Foundation, this initiative is bringing digital resources and e-learning opportunities to teachers, less-advantaged young people and rural communities throughout China. About 10,000 Chinese students will benefit from the programme in its first phase, in which twenty "e-learning centres" are being established in rural areas of the country. In Viet Nam, meanwhile, Coca-Cola has partnered with the Ministry of Education-Training and the National Youth Union to open forty Coca-Cola learning centres across the country.

The Coca-Cola/UNDP "e-learning for life" partnership in Malaysia is also being replicated in other parts of the world. One week after the project launch in Malaysia, Coca-Cola Bolivia signed a memorandum of understanding with UNDP and the Bolivian Ministry of Education, under which the three partners will collaborate on efforts to bridge the digital divide in the country.

Promoting ICT education/access is not the only arena in which Coca-Cola is partnering with a UN body. It is also partnering with the UN system across many different countries and cultures in an array of efforts to directly address community needs. UNAIDS, for example, has announced a partnership with The Coca-Cola Africa Foundation to bring new impetus to the battle against AIDS in Africa. Coca-Cola, which is the largest private sector employer in Africa, is committed to helping make a genuine difference in mitigating the devastating effects of the pandemic. As such, it has joined others in support of the Secretary-General's "call to action against HIV/AIDS".

In Argentina, Colombia, Venezuela, Chile and Costa Rica, Coca-Cola has teamed up with the United Nations Children's Fund on joint educational projects. They also recently collaborated on a special "Unity Chain" Internet project in which nearly 49,000 people from 179 countries shared their personal messages of hope and optimism through a virtual human chain encircling the globe.