Thank you very much. I am very hon­ored to receive this recog­ni­tion. However, I am not sure if I deserve it. I think there are so many peo­ple that have con­tributed to the growth and expan­sion of the Internet that it is very very dif­fi­cult to choose who deserves it. 

For devel­op­ing coun­tries like ours, the Internet is a means of col­lab­o­rat­ing and access to knowl­edge all around the world alike. In this world, we accel­er­ate the progress of our coun­tries. In Latin America and in the Caribbean in 1991, I remem­ber very well Stephen, who helped us so much, we start­ed to rec­og­nize and to orga­nize our­selves to build up region­al agree­ments for the devel­op­ment of Internet. 

At the onset, we had a forum of aca­d­e­m­ic net­works. Later we found­ed LACNIC, LACTLD, and also ISOC in Latin America. With the help of the European Commission in 2003, we began to build the Latin American [Cooperative of] Advanced Networks, aca­d­e­m­ic, CLARA, which is con­nect­ed to Europe Advanced Network, GÉANT, and to the Internet. All these orga­ni­za­tions have enabled our coun­tries to work col­lab­o­ra­tive­ly so as to fos­ter the devel­op­ment in Latin America, and have allowed us to reach the devel­op­ment of inter­na­tion­al knowl­edge togeth­er. Thank you very much. Thank you.