King crowned computer society’s person of the year

17 December 2010

The Internet Service Providers’ Association of South Africa (ISPA) congratulates Jenny King for being chosen as the Computer Society of South Africa’s ICT person of the year for the Western Cape.

King is a member of the ISPA management committee. She is also the executive director of the e-Schools Networks, a non-profit organisation that provides discounted connectivity to some 1600 schools across South Africa.

The annual award is given to a person who has made a significant contribution toward growing usage and accessibility of ICTs in the Western Cape and the rest of South Africa in a sustained manner during the course of the year.

King chairs ISPA’s Enterprise Development (EDev) and Training working groups and is a member of the Teachers Training and Events working groups, which gives her scope to further her passion for helping rural schools and people in disadvantaged areas to access technology.

The e-Schools Network started a modem project three years ago with the idea of giving away 300 modems with 2GB free bandwidth per month for a year. King recently managed to place 140 of these modems in Gauteng and the Northwest Province, which has been huge boost to this project.

Apart from hosting curriculum and media websites for the Western Cape Education Department, e-Schools Network is currently testing EZproxy access for the Department on an open source platform. Many schools and education departments also rely on e-Schools Network to host mailing lists on their behalf.

Said Ant Brooks, General Manager at ISPA: “Jenny is deeply passionate about finding ways to equalise education so that rural school children will receive a fair opportunity to succeed. She has made significant contributions towards improving accessibility to ICT for many schools in poorer parts of South Africa over the years, and richly deserves this award for her many accomplishments.”

“Jenny’s commitment to ISPA over the last three years has been unfailing, and we are grateful for her finding the time to work with us, even with the many other worthy projects she is managing at any time,” he concluded.