Telecentre-Europe plans to support the “eSkills Week”, by bringing together over 10,000 people from all around Europe in an online environment.  One of the events that will take place over March 1-5, 2010, the e-skills’ week, is the Get Online Day. This is a campaign that Telecentre-Europe coordinates and will involve 15 participating countries. In Romania, this campaign - which is generically referred to as Hai pe net! (Come on over the Internet!) - is supported by EOS Foundation, that has partnered up with Biblionet and ANBPR, the Microsoft Unlimited Potential Programme and Economia Bazată pe Cunoaştere project (Knowledge-based Economy).  Come on over the Internet! will take place on March 4th, 2010 and will bring together over 100 communities in 20 counties.
 
The aim of all e-centers, public internet access centers and the libraries that are involved in this event, is to attract as many persons as possible, some of whom will most probably be visiting the virtual environment for the first time.  The diversified activities that local organizers plan to develop on that particular day will take account of the specifics of every community, above all, but they are all focused on raising the awareness of participants upon the benefits that the access to information brings.

More to the point, the over 1,000 people who will get online for the first time and the over 5,000 more people who are using the Internet in telecenter locations nationwide (Bacău, Bihor, Botoşani, Braşov, Buzău, Caraş-Severin, Cluj, Dâmboviţa, Galaţi, Hunedoara, Iaşi, Maramureş, Mehedinţi, Mureş, Neamţ, Suceava, Timiş, Tulcea, Vâlcea, Vaslui), will either look for a better job or chat with friends and relatives who are far away; or they can find ways of saving some money.  At the end of the day, they will all be anyway capable of saying that they have been connected to the whole world.
 
“Since this project works simultaneously in 15 European countries, we would like to encourage Romanian surfers who want to support this message - Come on over the Internet! – to access www.ecentre.ro, and to prove that they were actually online on March the 4th, as part of Hai pe net! campaign. All of the hits will be counted by a special application in real time.  All of the participating countries will do that simultaneously and we wish to be some of the first in Europe“ says Gabriela Barna, Director of EOS Foundation Romania and coordinator of Hai pe net! campaign.
 
 
For more information, please contact Gabriela Barna, EOS Foundation - Educating for an Open Society, Timişoara,
0256/498 172, 0744/770 687, gabi.barna@eos.ro.