Companies like Telefonica, the dominant provider here, or Telmex dominate latinamerican markets. The companies make a tremendous profit on their pre-paid airtime services, but at the same time give a critical service to many of latinamerican's lowest-income consumers.

Our inspiration is the notable story of Grameen Phone, a billion-dollar phone company in Bangladesh built to serve the communication needs of that country's millions of low-income residents, and its synergy with Grameen Bank, the world's first microfinance institution founded by Nobel Prize-winner Muhammad Yunus.

While the privatization of state-owned enterprises and increased market competition has led to tremendous growth in Peru's telecommunication sector there still remain many rural and marginal areas without access to these telecomm services. Growth has occurred mainly in the urban areas; a study conducted by Peru's national statistical institute concludes that while there is an increase in access to ICTs among all sectors, the divide between the privileged and non-privileged sectors remains.

Bringing easy and affordable access to telecommunications services to rural families will them to better their businesses, increase access to education and health services, and provide a forum for interaction with government services. Services such as payment and credit systems using cell phones (or some other wireless device) will deliver basic, low cost microfinancial services to the masses particularly in rural regions. Others (VoIP telephony, e-business, P2P) will help enhance the overall local competitiveness and in turn stimulates economic growth.

A very important issue is the empowering of youth in the community and giving them responsabilities for managing and operating the network. In a world of collaborative partnerships, the role of the youth can be emphasized. Unfortunately, many initiatives have failed to integrate the roles of the youth in development processes. The consequence is the inability of exploit the potential of youth in innovation, creativity, leadership and integration. In our project youth acting as central parts of the development process and have the capacity to improve local development.

Our proposal:

Telecommunications and Microfinances for The Poor and The Poorest