The Board of Trustees of the telecentre.org Foundation is pleased to announce the appointment of Dr. Basheerhamad “Shaddy” Shadrach as the first executive director of the new foundation. His selection by the Board represents the completion of the transition of telecentre.org from a start-up program, housed at the International Development Research Centre (IDRC) in Canada, to an independent, non-profit organization, based in the Philippines. As head of the telecentre.org Foundation, Shaddy will oversee the implementation of the global telecentre networking, advocacy and support program.

“Given his work at telecentre.org and the telecentre.org Academy, Shaddy represents an important link to our past and to our future,” says Richard Fuchs, co-founder of telecentre.org. “His appointment will help ensure that the telecentre.org Foundation continues to succeed in its mission of increasing the social and economic impact of telecentres on development around the world.”

Shaddy has been involved in telecentre and information-related work since 1986, spending years measuring the impact of telecentres on the lives of people living in the developing world. His pioneering efforts in the field of information and communication technologies (ICT) for development include the creation of an online news indexing system for the Indian Express group; developing indev, the first ever Indian online community committed to development; organizing the first ever South Asian ICT conference, Tasknet; and launching the global anti-corruption portal, CORIS. He has been a strong advocate for grassroots ICT initiatives, leading the community-based caucus of the World Summit on the Information Society. His work toward developing the Pondicherry Framework for assessing rural ICT initiatives has earned him a Ph.D. from Loughborough University in the UK. In June 2006, he joined the IDRC as Senior Program Officer for Asia and as lead of the telecentre.org Academy.

Shaddy’s appointment takes effect on January 18, 2010.  

(posted by Partha Sarker at http://www.telecentre.org)