This project arose from a desire to change plans and attitudes from a ‘law and order’ ethos, which focuses on building police stations, courts, and prisons, to investing in community infrastructure for community building. The objective was to use new technologies as a tool to connect the disconnected population and jump the digital divide. The motto of the initiator of this initiative was “If in the past it has taken a village to raise a child, in the 21st Century each child must be globally connected”. The Global Learning Village develops a blueprint for smarter, healthier, and better-connected communities.

The independent non-profit Global Learning Village Foundation was established to coordinate, develop and promote the GLV model nationally and internationally. The strategy was implemented by securing key funding partners and persuading the Victorian Government (state) to invest a slice of its income from gambling revenue into the GLV model to help connect the disconnected by computers instead of poker machines.

The GLV was designed to provide the social infrastructure necessary for 21st Century communities in the areas most desperate for help. The GLV model is unique in its integrated strategy that:

• Provides built infrastructure as symbols of pride in disadvantaged areas.
• Uses technology as a tool to connect people who have been disconnected.
• Focuses on attributes that largely determine where everyone ends up in life: attitude, education, and opportunity.
• Delivers a sense of purpose for individuals and communities through lifelong learning.
• Provides a range of programmes for life skills, training, and jobs that have evolved to add significant economic, social and cultural value.
• Tailors to build infrastructure, programme delivery, and virtual communities to the wants, needs, scale, and budget of specific communities to make them sustainable.

(source: http://www.glv.org.au/learning-center/inclusion)

The GLV is tailored to the specific needs of each community and scaled for sustainability.Models have been established for $1 million, $2-5 million, $8-10 million, and a new town centre model at $15 million.

Partnerships were established with the three tiers of government (Federal, State, local government), as well as sponsorship deals with major companies (Ford, Visy Board), and charitable organizations (Pratt Foundation, Scanlon Foundation). Both the RMIT University and the Melbourne University support the aims of the GLV and provide‘in-kind’ sponsorship.

The most critical partnerships were with the City of Hume (a municipality within metropolitan Melbourne) and the Victorian Government which led to the recruitment of Microsoft, Intel and Cisco for the creation of the Ideas Lab.

The main impediment was getting all the three tiers of government to cooperate.´

Once the partnership had been established, the concept and the model found support from the corporate sector. No other significant barriers or conflicts were encountered.

The establishment of the two first Global Learning Centres has had a profound impact. The plan now is to use the GLV model to retrofit other communities left behind and to use it as the foundation for the new fringe suburbs, towns, and cities required to underwrite Australia’s next era of prosperity.

The Australian Government says it wants the GLV model to be part of Australia’s biggest nation building infrastructure project, the $42 billion rollout of National Broadband Network. Various State Governments also want to adapt the GLV model. The GLV model has been specifically designed to be replicated in communities throughout the world. The built infrastructure can be established according to the wants, needs and budget of specific communities. As described above, funding models have also been designed to make the GLV sustainable.

The project should be able to be applied to other Metropolis member cities. It may be targeted at addressing a particular factor, but it should be flexible enough that it could be applied anywhere else without, of course, losing its original form.

- Integrated Urban Governance Manual

- Integrated Urban Governance Manual annex

- Global Learning Village Foundation

- Pascal International Exchanges - Hume Global Learning Village

(see the links below)