commonspace

Telecentre Times newspaper launches in Bangladesh and India

Ranjpur, Bangladesh + Delhi, India – August, 2006: The Telecentre Times – a collaborative newspaper for the telecentre movement – has expanded a footprint dramatically over the past two weeks. 

The first big development was the release of the Telecentre Times in Bengali. This was produced by D.Net, DRIK and BNNRC. It was not only impressive to see the newspaper in a second language, but also to see how the content had evolved to include more material relevant to Bangladesh. The result is a publication that can provide true inspiration and insight to telecentre managers working at the grassroots, which was the point of creating a print newspaper in the first place.

There was also an Indian launch of the English version of the Times on the eve of the India Telecentre Forum. At the launch, representatives of all three telecentre.org social investors – SDC, Microsoft and IDRC – handed a copy of the paper to GKP executive director Rinalia Abdul Rahim. The paper was also widely distributed at the Forum itself.

It will be interesting to see where and what the Telecentre Times becomes next. Certainly, there will be another English edition (Ugabytes is working on this). But I expect there will be much more in the long run.

Bubbling up from the grassroots: telecentres in Bangladesh

Ranjpur, Bagladesh – August 26 - 30, 2006: In Bangladesh, telecentres are literally bring information to the people – by bicycle. D.net, a development research organization in Dhaka, has set up Pallitathya telecentres in four villages with the aim of offering a demand driven information service for rural people. Anyone in the village can come in and ask a question of the three infomediaries who work in the centre (two women / one man). Or, they can wait until one of the infomediaries drops by their house with her bicycle and mobile phone. In either case, the villagers get fast access to information about everything from farming to gynaecology to legal aid services. This information has already helped to save livestock, solve simple health problems and resolve conflicts in the villages being served by the centres.

Last week, D.net invited 80 people to a workshop in Ranjpur to learn about Pallitathya and other telecentre models that are emerging across Bangladesh. Most of the participants were from small rural development NGOs that had not yet integrated computers or the Internet into their work. They had a chance to learn about telecentres being set up by D.Net, Grameen Phone, Katalyst, UNESCO and Proshika. Working in small groups, they also had a chance to dream up what a ‘perfect telecentre’ would look like in the context of their work.

The main idea behind this workshop was to encourage these small NGOs to take up the telecentre concept in their own work, with D.Net offering both inspiration and a helping hand. It was a brilliant approach, really. These NGOs already have an organizational base and relationships in the villages where they work. Adding a telecentre into only requires a few extra people, some computers and a little know how (the last of which D.Net can provide through the support network it will build). The upside of this approach is not just simplicity, but also sustainability. We know that telecentres embedded in existing social development organizations have the best track record surviving and thriving. D.Net’s approach is to start with these organizations and build out the telecentre ecosystem from there.

There was also talk at the meeting of creating a Mission 2011: a broad coalition of organizations advocating for a rural knowledge revolution using Mission 2007 from India as a model. This has the potential to bring in not only some of the smaller NGOs at the Ranjpur meeting but also larger players like BRAC, Grameen and even the government. If this happened, Bangladesh could quickly find itself with a telecentre movement as rich, diverse and vibrant as it’s bigger neighbour next door.

Strengthening global connections: telecentre leaders in Delhi

Delhi, India – August 21 - 25, 2006: Watching her wander around Delhi with telecentre leaders from around the world, it was hard to believe that Mariana Posfai is new to the telecentre movement. She jumped right into the explorations of Indian telecentres, sharing ideas with her peers from other countries and musing about the global telecentre movement. Maybe it’s because she’s been doing grassroots networking on other issues for so long. She seems to have networking in her blood!

Mariana – the new managing director of the European Union of Telecottage Associations – and telecentre leaders from seven other countries came to Delhi to participate in the India Telecentre Forum. There were people from Mali, the Philippines, Hungary, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Laos, Ecuador and Canada. Each of them had a chance to share their experience with Indian telecentre leaders through a two hour long speedgeek and talk show on sustainability issues. In addition to attending the Forum, this group went on a study tour of Drishtee and Datamation Foundation telecentres. This was a chance to see what is happening here in India first hand, looking at how entrepreneurship and social goals are blending in real time. 

This sort of exchange program points to an important role that telecentre.org plays – helping ideas travel and partnerships blossom. On one level, this is about the direct knowledge exchanges that you can point to (the speedgeek, the telecentre visits, etc.). But it is more importantly about the way knowledge and social capital grow as telecentre leaders from different countries spend time together and become friends. From this you get the hybridization of ideas and the creation of concrete collaborations (e.g. blending European socially focused infomediary training with Indian social entrepreneur training). It’s hard to touch this sort of thing sometimes, but it essential glue that helps the movement grow and the telecentre concept evolve.

Mission 2007 pilots entrepreneurship training

Delhi, India – August 21 - 22, 2006: There was Muthu from WorldCorps bouncing a balloon on his elbow. The grassroots knowledge workers in the room looked around tentatively, slowly smiled … and pulled out their own balloons. This was a chance to play not only with balloons and each other, it was also a chance to play with idea of social entrepreneurship as a key element of running a telecentre.

The balloon bouncing was part and parcel of the first Mission 2007 Training Commons pilot workshop. Fifteen second year fellows from the Tata National Virtual Academy had come to the workshops to help test out the social entrepreneurship curriculum developed by Muthu with help NASSCOM Foundation’s Sagarika Bose and IDRC’s Ambika Sharma. The fellows came from projects of all types: MSSRF knowledge centres; ITC e-choupal kiosks; government CICs; farmer education groups. They participated in many languages, with Tamil and Hindi as common communication channels and with written materials in English. The session took place side by side with a larger scale participatory knowledge management workshop that MSSRF was running with first year NVA fellows.

There were two primary pieces of feedback from the participants: 1) we want more of this kind of training and 2) we need this adapted to our own language and context. With this input, the Training Commons team (MSSRF, WorldCorps, NASSCOM, IDRC and others) will move on to the improvement of the entrepreneurship module as well as the development of modules on community development, grassroots marketing and infomediary skills. These will be piloted in a number of languages with more NVA fellows over the next six months.

India’s evolving telecentre movement

Delhi, India – August 23 - 25, 2006: Ravi Gupta provided a clear mission for my valedictory address at last week’s India Telecentre Forum: talk about how the Indian telecentre movement has changed in the past year.

Certainly, a great deal has changed. The number of players has grown at the grassroots. Small companies and social enterprises are popping up with technology and service ideas. And, the government has stepped into the picture with a plan for 100,000 Community Service Centres and even more Panchayat based telecentres. Put simply: Swaminathan’s big dream of a knowledge centre in every village has become a growing snowball rolling down hill with a momentum that would be almost impossible to stop.

The Indian Telecentre Forum provided an excellent vantage point from which to view both the good and bad sides of this snowball. On the good side, the Indian telecentre movement continues to play to its strengths in terms of diversity and entrepreneurship. There are dozens of different private, government and NGO telecentre models being tried out and an equal number of organizations rushing to develop services and technologies that make sense in a rural context. Yet, there is also an undercurrent of fear and concern: What will happen when the government centres start rolling out? Will my model succeed? Can this whole dream really become a reality? While these questions are natural, they have the potential dampen the spirit of collaboration that pervades the Indian telecentre movement. That would be a shame.

Mission 2007 remains a great hope in this regard, providing philosophical umbrella that spans everything from global corporations to people working in telecentres on the ground. The convocation of National Virtual Academy fellows at the Indian Telecentre Forum demonstrated the power of this umbrella. The 75 grassroots knowledge workers receiving the fellowship this year had a chance to meet with policy makers, NGOs running telecentre programs and international telecentre leaders in the hours following the convocation. While this kind of dialogue may seem like a small thing, it’s actually a key ingredient in keeping the movement alive: a concrete and enduring connection between people running telecentres at the grassroots and people designing new programs and services. Mission 2007offers an opportunity to keep that connection alive.

PS. Super kudos to the CSDMS team for pulling off an amazing Indian Telecentre Forum event!