Tomorrow, June 18, is Get Online Philippines Day.

Spearheaded by the Commission on Information and Communications Technology (CICT), the event will kick off with the launch of the Get Online Philippines campaign during a symbolic ceremony that will take place in the morning at the CICT Building in Quezon City, to be followed by a validation workshop on the formulation of the country's telecentre roadmap for 2010-2016.

During the kick-off ceremony, the 92 new telecentres under the Philippine Community eCenter (CeC) Program will be launched to highlight the Philippine Government's effort to make ICT more accessible to the grassroots.

“ICT has been government’s primary strategy and tool to enhance the country’s competitiveness in the global economic arena and generate much-needed jobs and livelihood opportunities for the nation,” shares CICT Chairman and Secretary Ray Anthony Roxas-Chua III, who also chairs the telecentre.org Foundation Board.

During the day, free computer use and Internet access will be provided to the general public in CICT computer laboratories and offices and in various telecentres nationwide as well as in public high schools that are beneficiaries of CICT's iSchools Program and in different branches of the country's leading Internet café, Netopia.

The Get Online Philippines campaign, which takes inspiration from the Get Online Day launched by Telecentre Europe in March this year, is part of the country's celebration of National ICT Month this June.

Various activities have been lined up for the month-long celebration to include free Internet services, ICT literacy tutorial and learning sessions, telecentre open houses and ICT forums to encourage people and communities to get online and to discuss issues of interest to the industry stakeholders.