The E-learning Competence Center (ELCC) participated in the fourth annual meeting of the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) held in Sharm El-Sheik.
 
ELCC Director Mr. Yasser Kazem participated in two sessions in the forum. The first, titled “Assessing the role of the participative web in Youth Empowerment; a regional outlook”, covered key development issues and challenges affecting youth empowerment through education and skill development using the potential of the participative web in the region.

 During the session, Kazem presented the center’s experience in fostering youth empowerment through the use of web 2.0 learning technology. Challenges to the adoption of e-learning and full utilization of web 2.0 technologies in Egypt like cultural, access, and language barriers were also addressed by Kazem.
 
The second session, held under the title “The challenges of being literate to foster participatory cultures”, aimed to provide clear understanding of issues related to internet literacy and the skills needed to both leverage such literacy and undermine its possible drawbacks.

During the session, Kazem presented ELCC’s model of e-learning as a case study for fostering participatory cultures in Egypt, prevailing internet literacy among its youth and capturing its positive gains.

IGF is a multi-stakeholder forum for policy dialogue on issues of Internet governance. The establishment of the IGF was formally announced by the UN secretary-general in July 2006 as one of the outputs of the second phase of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS). The first IGF meeting was held in Athens, Greece, in 2006, the second in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in 2007 and the third in Haidarabad, India end of 2007.