 It's a pleasure to be virtually present at this inaugural meeting of the Pacific Centre for Flexible and Open Learning for Development. This is an important event in the life of the Commonwealth of Learning. As you know, our mission is to help Commonwealth Member States and institutions to harness the potential of distance learning and technologies for expanding access to education and training, and our motto is learning for development. Following Nobel Laureate Professor Amartya Sen, we believe that giving people the opportunity to learn increases their freedoms to be and to do, and helps accelerate progress towards achieving the international development goals and the Commonwealth values of peace, equality, democracy and good governance. In addition to placing our work within the context of internationally agreed development goals, we have a strong country focus and tailor our programs to suit the needs of Member States. We have a very active network of focal points nominated by Commonwealth Ministers of Education, and this network identifies the priorities that call must address. The focal points for the Pacific at their meeting in 2011, which happened in Auckland, believed that call should make TVET materials available, bring good practice in open and distance learning to the region, provide technical advice in open education resources. Our next specific focal points meeting will be held this year and is being co-hosted by the Honourable Minister of Education Samoa at the end of September, where we hope to formally inaugurate Backfold. As a result of the wide consultations in all the four regions of the Commonwealth, call developed a strategic plan for 2012-2015. Within this frame, call has organized its work in two sectors, education and livelihoods and health. These two sectors have seven initiatives and two cross-cutting themes of e-learning and gender. Call has also identified five core strategies to implement its work, partnerships, capacity, materials, models and policies. As a small organization, each of these strategies helps us to leverage our impact. Let me give you examples of some of our activities in the Pacific and you will understand what I mean. As countries achieve success in providing universal primary education, there are still significant barriers preventing many young people from entering secondary education. Call works in 26 Commonwealth countries in expanding open schooling to increase learning opportunities for secondary education, particularly for girls out of school youth and people in remote regions. In the Pacific, Call initiated its open schooling work by commissioning a 12-country report to identify the need for open schools. As a result, Call in collaboration with the University of South Pacific supported the establishment of open schools in Tonga, Kiribati and the Solomon Islands. Call has facilitated a twinning arrangement between the Tecura Correspondence College Wellington and Vanuatu Open School. The 22-country consortium of the Commonwealth Open Schools Association has six members from the region, which include New Zealand and Australia. One of the key obstacles to achieving universal primary education is the shortfall in teacher supply in most developing countries. Therefore, Call provides support to teacher training institutions to strengthen and expand their programs through the use of open and distance learning and technology. Call's work in teacher education in the Pacific has focused on building capacity in quality assurance, curriculum development and multigrid teacher training. Many Commonwealth countries are trying to improve participation rates in higher education. Call is using distance learning approaches to help achieve this. In the Pacific, Call's legislative drafting program is offered through the Vanuatu campus of USP and Call provides scholarships for learners from the region. North Ministers of Education directed Call to establish a virtual university for the small states, a network of 31 countries. Nine institutions covering all Commonwealth regions are now offering WASC developed courses. The first cohort of students of the Sustainable Agriculture Course has graduated from the University of Samoa under the WASC arrangement and a common transnational qualifications framework is in place. The National University of Samoa, the University of PNG, Vanuatu Institute of Technology and the Tonga Institute of Higher Education are all active participants in the WASC initiative. Call's work in skills development builds the capacity of institutions to offer new flexible courses for people working in the informal sector, especially women. Call has developed courses in basic trades and in vocational literacy and these are being used in the Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, PNG, Tuvalu and Nauru. A strategic plan for the TVET division of the Department of Education in PNG has been developed supported by Call. Working with the Ministry of Education, Call supported a training program on working with concrete and 167 young people qualified to work with concrete as a result of this training and this is a large number for Nauru. Schools of farm families do not have access to learning in developing countries. Call offers a new approach called the Lifelong Learning for Farmers or L3F. It's a very interesting model because Call catalyzes the links between the civil society, institutions and microfinance institutions to develop multimedia based learning. Such a linkage in which every agricultural borrower is also a learner has led to vibrant entrepreneurial behaviors among the poorer and marginalized communities. Here are the participants of a recently initiated L3F program in PNG. The Healthy Communities initiative helps local organizations to create non-formal educational programs about community health and development. These photographs depict a learning program called a bag of life in a district of Malawi in Africa with very high rates of maternal and child mortality. Here again is a very interesting model. The community develops programs in the local languages that reach thousands of learners resulting in health seeking behaviors in the community. Building on consistent advocacy and capacity building, the Isabel Province government has accepted a proposal to support technology mediated learning through the Isabel Learning Network and this is in the Solomon Islands. Capacity building programs in community health and development include participants from PNG, Kiribati, Solomon Islands and Vanuatu. Our work in e-learning cuts across all initiatives. In the Pacific we have established a chair in Open Education Resources or OER at Otago Polytechnic. The Open Polytechnic of New Zealand's or Opens's certificate in e-learning reaches many stakeholders in Africa and the Pacific through call support. Calls directory of OER has a consolidated list of open and free courses in four areas higher education, teacher education, skills development and secondary education that anyone can adopt and adapt. This is an important resource for both teachers and learners. Here is another cross-cutting theme that underpins all calls work. As we know violence against women is a critical issue in several Pacific nations and elsewhere in the Commonwealth, particularly South Asia. Lima Gobi, the Nobel laureate from Liberia, said that one way to stop this is to put more women in power. Women hold just 21% of the parliamentary seats across the Commonwealth. In the Pacific, if we don't include Australia and New Zealand, the figure drops to a mere 4%. Call is in the process of discussing how to develop a multimedia leadership training course for women in the region. Call approaches emerging technologies from the point of view of developing member states. How can we reach students under this tree with quality learning materials? Access or the classroom without walls is one possible solution. It is developed by using readily available and low-cost components, open-source software, and the entire cost of these two little devices is $100. Aptus does not require power from the mains or electrical grids. We can use solar chargers instead. It does not require any connectivity. We use a wireless router. All this enables teachers and students to access good quality digital materials through this device. As of now, learners can access the Wikipedia for schools containing over 6,000 articles or the over 2,000 Khan Academy videos covering topics relevant to learners in primary schools or high schools. A whole library of free books is also made available. And to supplement all this, local content can be generated and added quite easily. As Dennis Pack from Kiribati writes, and I quote him, I was very impressed with the speed at which the resources loaded. If we add our own content, I can visualize the Aptus featuring as the main technology on many of our island primary and secondary schools, unquote. Finally, Kohl recognizes the need to further strengthen its work in the Pacific. Backfold will be a key step in this direction. We are very grateful to the Vice Chancellor of USP, Professor Rajesh Chandra, for making this possible. And to Mr. Hasmukh Lal for his hard work and commitment. Let me also thank each one of you who as members of the advisory group will shape and guide the center to become a hub of world-class expertise in distance learning and technology in the region. We look forward to working with you. Thank you very much for your support.