Partnering with UNICEF to help wire the world’s classrooms

Just before the holidays, I shared an update on the social impact program we’re building at SoftBank Investment Advisers (SBIA). Today, I am incredibly excited to announce that SBIA is partnering with The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) who is working with the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) on the GIGA initiative -- a program to connect every school to the internet -- as part of our work to create a positive, lasting impact on the world. We believe wholeheartedly in the capacity for connectivity to expand opportunities for children around the world, which is why we are particularly excited to work with the UNICEF team on this powerful program. 

Over the last year at SBIA, we’ve been thinking about our role in society, and how to make the most of our expertise and the collective scale and resources of our ecosystem. We firmly believe in the transformative power of technology, but according to the Broadband Commission for Sustainable Development, half of humanity remains disconnected from the internet and doesn’t have access to new technologies. We want to do our part to fix this, and so when UNICEF and the ITU approached us about this project, it was a natural fit. 

Over the next 12 months, SBIA will serve as a strategic engagement advisor to GIGA, offering pro-bono expertise in structured financing and using our ecosystem to map, finance and implement connectivity solutions. Our role in the project will be to ensure public open source financial models produce sustainable infrastructure for local economies, making the most of public and private sector funding. Huge thanks to UNICEF’s Chris Fabian and the team at SBIA who have worked so hard to get this off the ground, in particular Ram Trichur, Zony Chen, James Lo and Catherine Soler, and thanks to Colin Fan, Shintaro Isono and our legal team for their expertise. 

UNICEF’s incredible work for children around the world is well known and we’re excited to partner with the team on this important cause. I believe access to the internet is a fundamental human right, and providing every school with internet connectivity will level the playing field, offering every young person access to information, opportunity and choice. This is not only the right thing to do, but I believe it is an important step towards increasing diversity across every industry, including technology, and will have a compounding positive impact over time.  

The long-term impacts of this program are incredibly exciting -- imagine the next generation of founders, world leaders and changemakers that will have an opportunity to learn, create, and share their ideas with the world. 

We will share more about the initiative and our experiences in the coming months, but in the meantime, we’re proud to be partnering with UNICEF who is working with ITU to tackle this challenge.