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Busan, South Korea, 28 October 2014 – The United Nations International Telecommunication Union and UN Women today presented the Gender Equality Mainstreaming – Technology (GEM-TECH) Award to iMerit Technology Services at its 19th Plenipotentiary Conference.
The award to Anudip’s sister company was conferred by the ITU Secretary General-Elect, Houlin Zhao, before 2500 attendees assembled at its quadrennial conference in Busan, South Korea. Co-organized with UN Women, the GEM-TECH Awards recognize outstanding achievements of organizations and individuals in the area of gender equality and mainstreaming through information and communication technology (ICT). The awards were open to leading women and men, as well as organizations working in the field of ICT and gender.
iMerit received its award for the category, “ICT Applications, Content, Production Capacities and Skills for Women’s Economic Empowerment and Poverty Reduction.” The winners for the seven ICT categories were selected from over 360 nominations and 37 finalists from all over the world. This inaugural edition of the GEM-Tech Awards wassponsored by ITU Gold Partners, the Sultanate of Oman, the Republic of Rwanda, the Swiss Confederation, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation; and ITU Silver Partners, Cisco Systems and Facebook.
Congratulating the winners, ITU Secretary General, Dr. Hamadoun I. Touré, praised the exceptionally high quality of nominations and stressed that much still needs to be done to leverage the full power of ICTs to improve the lives of women and men.
“This is an important moment in the history of the ITU,” said Dr. Touré. “At a time when there are 200 million less women than men online, these awards for the first time recognize excellent role models in gender equalization mainstreaming from across the globe.”
Accepting the award, iMerit CEO, Radha Basu said she was deeply honored to accept the award on behalf of the 30,000 marginalized young students of iMerit/Anudip, who have been mainstreamed into internet and IT jobs.
“The women at iMerit believe strongly in market based solutions,” said Ms. Basu. “They wish not to be beneficiaries of the UN and large corporations. They want them to be our clients. Our dream is to become a mini-Facebook or a mini-Alibaba, with women as equal shareholders in the global internet economy. That is mainstreaming.”
For the official ITU press release click here.
About iMerit Technology Services
iMerit is an innovative, award-winning IT services firm with a vision to shape the future of the web services industry. Using a tested integrated business model, iMerit follows a four-step process of empowering the impoverished youth through mobilization, training, employment, and up-skilling in IT project services. To date, iMerit and its sister company Anudip Foundation have created sustainable livelihoods in the IT market for over 30,000 rural youth and women, while providing high quality, highly scalable IT service solutions to a global client base. iMerit’s leadership team brings a combined 100 years of experience in leading large teams of IT professionals working at premier multinational companies. Clients include universities, corporations, governments, startups and non-profits worldwide. To learn more, visit www.imerit.net.
About ITU
ITU is the leading United Nations agency for information and communication technology. For nearly 150 years, ITU has coordinated the shared global use of the radio spectrum, promoted international cooperation in assigning satellite orbits, worked to improve communication infrastructure in the developing world, and established the worldwide standards that foster seamless interconnection of a vast range of communications systems. From broadband networks to new-generation wireless technologies, aeronautical and maritime navigation, radio astronomy, satellite-based meteorology and converging fixed-mobile phone, Internet and broadcasting technologies, ITU is committed to connecting the world. www.itu.int.
