Aletha Schelby is Program Manager for TechSoup Asia.

Having been at TechSoup Global for eight years now, I can remember what it was like before we added the “Global” to our name (literally and figuratively). How exciting it was when we first started down the road of expanding our programs and services to NGOs in other countries!

Growing from serving just the United States and Canada to now 38 countries (including nine in the Asia/Pacific region) in just under five years offers plenty of opportunity for learning and change. And we’re still at it. With a mission to serve every NGO on the planet, we are constantly working on faster, more flexible, and relevant ways to do what we do in every corner of the world.

Enter TechSoup Asia, newly launched in 2011 thanks to a generous grant from Microsoft! It is one of several projects at TSG that aims to retool our models to achieve maximum impact.

TechSoup Asia currently offers product donations from our donating partners Microsoft, Symantec, and SAP, as well as relevant and useful content to NGOs in Singapore and Malaysia. We’ve also launched a NetSquared Local in Singapore, and are working to include the Philippines and Thailand in the near future.

But the coolest part of TechSoup Asia is how we have been switching up the way we partner with organizations to deliver programs in these countries. At the core of TSAsia is our belief that you may go faster alone, but you surely go farther together.

With this motto, we have already built a coalition team of several of our existing Global Network Partners in the region: Hong Kong Council of Social Service, Connecting Up, and the Frontier Foundation of Taiwan. We have also been excited to meet and make friends with people like Tina Hung, Deputy CEO of NCSS, and Raj Ridvan Singh, International Director, SOLS 24/7, who we look forward to partnering with further to make an even greater impact.

We still have much work do to ensure that the NGOs we seek to serve get the most relevant, engaging, and empowering content and services we can provide. For now, I invite you to visit TechSoup Asia, like us on Facebook, and tell your friends! And if our unfolding story has captured your imagination, stay tuned for a new blog series on the TechSoup Global site in which we’ll share more about our thinking about this new model and welcome your input. I look forward to taking this journey with you!