Discovery Channel Global Education Partnership and The Coca-Cola Africa Foundation Partner On Educational Initiative

Discovery Channel Global Education Partnership and The Coca-Cola Africa Foundation Partner On Educational Initiative

-- $10 Million grant and long-term partnership to be announced at Discovery Channel Global Education Partnership's 10th Anniversary Gala --

SILVER SPRING, Md., May 8 /PRNewswire/ -- Discovery Channel Global Education Partnership (DCGEP) and The Coca-Cola Africa Foundation (TCCAF) will announce a new partnership dedicated to increasing educational opportunities for children and communities across Africa. The Coca-Cola Africa Foundation has granted DCGEP $10 Million over five years to fund the expansion of the organization's future education projects in underserved communities on the continent.

Founded in 2001, The Coca-Cola Africa Foundation continues to strategically invest in four priority areas to encourage sustainable development in Africa: health, water, entrepreneurship, and education. One of the few organizations with a presence in all the countries on the African continent, TCCAF recently identified Discovery Channel Global Education Partnership as the most compatible organization to lead the educational flagship of their community partnership initiatives across the continent.

Currently celebrating its 10th anniversary, DCGEP has a proven track record of establishing sustainable community information hubs, called Learning Centers, in underserved schools. The organization's comprehensive implementation strategy includes providing schools with a television and DVD/VCR player, three years of teacher training, and a library of culturally relevant programs produced by DCGEP, in the appropriate language.

"Children all over the world are eager to learn, but many lack resources and opportunities. Our partnership with TCCAF will enable us to reach more children in Africa through a program that has demonstrated its ability to improve learning outcomes, teacher effectiveness and community involvement in schools," said Gail Ifshin, Executive Director of DCGEP.

Carole Wainaina, President of The Coca-Cola Africa Foundation, noted "We are delighted to partner with Discovery Channel Global Education Partnership, enabling this unique organization to scale up and maximize the impact of their innovative, structured approach to enriching student learning in Africa."

Over the past ten years, DCGEP has established 194 Learning Centers in 10 countries around the world, six of which are in Africa. Each Learning Center participates in three years of training and technical support provided by local DCGEP staff. By investing in developing capacity among its local trainers, and within the school itself, the DCGEP ensures that each Learning Center has the greatest potential for success and long-term sustainability. Ninety-five percent of Learning Centers continue to sustain the project on their own after the three year period.

The $10 million grant from TCCAF will expand DCGEP's reach in Angola, Namibia, South Africa, and Uganda, and will bring the Learning Center project for the first time to Egypt, Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria and Morocco. Together TCCAF and DCGEP will bring educational resources and teacher training to nearly 70 more schools in these nine countries, bringing the number of students reached to nearly one million by 2012.

For additional information, go to http://www.discoveryglobaled.org/.

About Discovery Channel Global Education Partnership

Discovery Channel Global Education Partnership is a 501 (c) (3) non-profit charitable organization dedicated to reaching across the global information divide with the tools and training necessary to extend the power of educational television to underserved communities around the world. Please join us as we celebrate a decade of making a positive, sustainable difference in peoples' lives through education in Africa and Latin America. DCGEP was spearheaded by Discovery Communications, Inc. in 1997 as an effort to bring together partners from the private and public sectors in support of a unique, international, grassroots education initiative. Together with locally appropriate video programming and long-term training, television is being used to enhance learning and understanding, share new ideas, honor traditions, and stimulate a sense of community at a local and global level.

About The Coca-Cola Africa Foundation (TCCAF)

TCCAF was created in 2001 to manage the community investments of the Coca- Cola System in Africa. Over the last five years, it has invested substantially in the areas of education, health and the environment, and continues to partner, leveraging the System's unparalleled manufacturing and distribution network, to access some of Africa's most remote locations for community development and numerous disaster relief efforts across the continent.

TCCAF is partnering with communities, NGOs, governments and corporates to deliver an integrated response to Africa's challenges. We are partnering on a few targeted, high-impact and scaleable multiyear programmes in priority areas identified by consumers and communities and aligned with and designed to support National Government development priorities in Water, Health, Education and Entrepreneurship. Each programme is reported on and independently evaluated each year, to enable global benchmarking and accurate assessment of our impact.

We are proud to say that TCCAF works in partnership with, and is funded by the entire Coca-Cola System in Africa, and that our bottlers play a key role in resourcing our programmes. This integrated, team oriented approach enables us to operate on an unprecedented scale; ensuring our programmes are impactful and sustainable.

Source: Discovery Channel Global Education Partnership

CONTACT: Tammy Shea, Tammy_Shea@Discovery.com, or Marjorie Hall,
Marjorie_Hall@Discovery.com, both of Discovery Channel Global Education
Partnership

Web site:

http://www.discoveryglobaled.org/
http://www.discovery.com/

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