Facebook CEO Zuckerberg shares story of Filipina student helped by Internet.org

RizaRiza lives on a small island and commutes to school by boat. When she was writing her final thesis, a typhoon hit and made travel impossible. With Facebook and Free Basics, Riza was able to communicate with her classmates during the storm and finish her thesis. #connecttheworld

Posted by Internet.org by Facebook on Friday, October 2, 2015

“I wanted greater for myself.”

This was the motivation of Riza Mae Tachado, a computer science graduate from an island municipality in Antique.

On Tuesday, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg shared a video on his account the story of Tachado, who used the free internet services of internet.org to succeed in her studies.

Tachado lives in Malalison Island in Culasi, Antique where the only job of women is gathering seashells.

“But I wanted something greater for myself. So I decided to study computer science in town,” she said in the video.

She travelled by boat everyday just to get to mainland Antique in Panay island just to attend to school.

But while writing her thesis, a powerful typhoon struck their island so she wasn’t able to attend to her classes for several weeks.

“I could not leave the island for weeks,” she said.

But this did not hinder her desire to finish her studies.

Tachado said she and her groupmates used their mobile phones to communicate.

“My phone became a classroom to communicate with my groupmates. We used Facebook through Internet.org to write our thesis,” she said.

Internet.org offers free data connectivity through service providers like Smart, Globe, and Sun Cellular. Through this, Tachado and her groupmates were able to finish their thesis titled “Automated Water Billing System of Culasi Water District.”

“I am proud to be the first person in my family to earn a computer science degree,” she said. CDG

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