08/12/2008

December 10^th 1948: the United Nations General Assembly adopts the Universal Declaration of Human Rights; with Article 26 proclaiming that “Everyone has a right to education. Education shall be free...”After 60 years of waiting, ALISON finds a way to make all education, scalably and sustainably free to access on the Web.

December 10^th 2008, Galway, IRELAND: ALISON, the free online learning website for basic skills announced it had registered its 250,000th free learner. Founded in April 2007, ALISON has rapidly become one of the most widely used online learning services providing free access to basic and essential skills training. ALISON’s portfolio of learning includes comprehensive interactive courseware suites for IT skills, Health & Safety, Financial Literacy and much more. ALISON recently announced its intention to release a set of freely accessible high-school curricula, as well as greatly expanding its portfolio of IT skills and English language resources. ALISON has acquired several thousand hours of high-quality commercial quality content for free publication through early 2009.

Speaking about the success of ALISON, founder and CEO Mike Feerick stated that “the success to date of the ALISON free learning model suggests that all learning, not just that of basic skills will be available for free online access within the next decade. This includes comprehensive high-school and college education curricula worldwide”. Feerick continued: “Ubiquitous free access to high-quality learning online will be an enduring mark of the 21st century helping to free much of humanity from deep poverty, ignorance and intolerance”. To view interactive courses from various basic skills categories with immediate access, simply register at www.alison.com.

ENDS (278 Words)

ALISON
Launched in April 2007, ALISON provides freely accessible interactive learning on the Web. With registered learners in every country and territory worldwide, its mission is to enable anyone, anywhere, to educate themselves for free via interactive self-paced multimedia. Based in Galway, Ireland, ALISON provides interactive learning for basic and essential life and workplace skills. In a 2008 report, the U.K. Government's Dept of Innovation, Universities and Skills declared ALISON was part of a wave of “new technologies … opening up the world of knowledge and offering new, flexible and exciting ways to learn.” Page 26, Informal Adult Learning – Shaping the Way Ahead, (2008), London: DIUS Publications. 

Universal Declaration of Human Rights
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) is a declaration adopted by the United Nations General Assembly on December 10^th 1948, at Palais de Chaillot, Paris, France. It consists of 30 articles which have been elaborated in subsequent international treaties, regional human rights instruments, national constitutions and laws.

For press information contact:
Ben Mead, Press Relations, ALISON
e-mail: bmead@alison.com