Userful Blog

Today marks the first day of the fifty-second annual meeting of the Board of Governors of the Inter-American Development Bank, as well as the twenty-sixth annual meeting of the Board of Governors of the Inter-American Investment Corporation. Today's meetings, sessions, and seminars are taking place at the Calgary TELUS Convention Center, not far from Userful head office.

The IDB meetings will be focused on discussions and collaboration on issues and solutions in Latin America. Userful's participation will be focused primarily on adding their expertise on youth development, digital and social inclusion, and education in Latin America. Userful's first hand experience in Latin-America gives voice to the impact inter-American collaboration on innovative technology can have and how it can multiply the success and return on investment of government infrastructure investment.

Latin America is a beautiful region, and is also an increasingly environmentally concious region. The Inter-American Development Bank is no exception, fostering support for sustainability in the environmental sense, as well as the economic sense. Userful is a green tech company that strives to connect the world through sustainable desktop computing. Userful's ability to turn 1 computer into 10 reduces electricity use by up to 90%, enabling schools to recover the cost of their computers through electricity cost savings over a few years. It also reduces e-waste by up to 80% and reduces manufacturing water use by over 9000kg per system.

Read more about our participation at this years Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) Annual Board of Governors meeting here:
http://www.koreaittimes.com/story/13729/calgary-tech-firm-makes-positive-impact-youth-development-latin-america

Userful representatives are currently attending the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) Youth Development Conference today as part of their overall attendance at the prestigious IDB event in Calgary this week. Today's youth conference emphasizes the strategic importance of investing in young people in Latin America and the Caribbean to support poverty reduction and social inclusion efforts, as well as looking at the contribution young people can make in the development process as agents of change.

Social and digital inclusion is very important to the Userful Team. We are firm believers that every person deserves access to a computer. Children having access to a computer gives them access to a broader community and to a brighter future. Userful is proud to be part of many multiseat initiatives around the world that seek to improve the quality and access to education for young people through providing low-cost, high quality Linux-based multiseat computer stations.

Userful has sold over 500,000 seats of its software in Latin America, and countries such as Brazil, who have already successfully deployed over 350,000 Userful computer stations to schools in every municipality, are finding that it is feasible to provide every student with an education using computers through the combined cost savings of using Userful MultiSeat, Linux and open source software. With no licensing fees or restrictions on open source software, students can also continue to learn, explore and utilize software programs at home. This allows families to be more involved in their children's education.

To date, the project the Userful is part of in Brazil is the largest digital inclusion project in the world, bringing access to computer technology to children and their families across the country.