February 25, 1999

The Bridges Initiatives Inc. (Bridges.com) is pleased to announce the Ontario Ministry of Education and Training has purchased Career Explorer, an online career guidance service, for the province's 750 publicly funded English secondary schools. Over 80 publicly funded French schools in Ontario will be included in the contract when a French language version of Career Explorer is launched. All the schools involved also receive CD-ROM copies of the Bridges.com materials.

The Ontario Ministry of Education and Training is purchasing a one-year subscription to the Career Explorer (CX) service for the 750 schools, and thereafter individual schools or boards can elect to continue annual subscriptions.

"We're pleased the Ontario government has decided to give the province's secondary schools a one-year taste of our Internet-based content and planning tools," says Doug Manning, CEO of Bridges.com. "This agreement introduces our engaging career services to more young people and will help them stay up-to-date on the latest opportunities and career choices available to them. In terms of the number of schools and the value, it's the largest region-wide contract Bridges.com has signed."

Ontario is the second province to negotiate large-scale subscriptions to the Bridges.com's career planning service. Manitoba's provincial government purchased access for 300 of its schools in February, 1998.

The 750 schools will increase Bridges.com's Canadian subscriber base to 1,250 schools, or 30% of Canada's secondary school market. Approximately 180 schools in Ontario already subscribed to the service prior to the agreement. In addition to the 1,250 Canadian schools, 2,000 American schools are also CX subscribers.

About Bridges.com

Bridges.com is an online publisher that specializes in creating career development resources for high schools, colleges, universities, libraries and adult career centres.

The premier service of Bridges.com is Career Explorer an Internet-based library of career-related articles, daily updates, planning tools, and interactive services. CX delivers original, up-to-date and engaging career profiles, labour market analysis and career development tools to over 3,250 subscribing sites. More than 1.5 million students across North America have access to the service. Nearly nine million page views were recorded on Bridges.com's sites in 1998.