On the last afternoon of the CTCNet conference, the organizers hosted an international symposium focusing on the work of participants from outside the United States. Through scholarships sponsored by Microsoft, representatives of telecenters from 10 countries came to CTCNet, and we got to hear from many of them over the course of the afternoon.
Maripaz Diaz of Somos Telecentros gave an overview of her network’s activities in Latin America. Initially launched as a telecenters research initiative, Somos Telecentros evolved into a Latin American network of regional telecenter networks. Along with addressing strategies for financial sustainability of telecenters, the network felt it was important to help telecenter managers address political sustainability and social sustainability as well, she explained. Somos Telecentros has joined with CTCNet, Aspira and Canada’s association of “CAP centers” to form the Telecenters of Americas Project (TAP), to help coordinate activities and policies relevant to their work in North and South America.
Karen Higgs of the Association of Progressive Communications (APC) discussed her organizations work around the world. Launched as a partnership between Peace Net and Green Net in the late 1980s, APC initially served as a network of Internet nodes for NGOs around the world. By 1992, APC provided the communications for the UN Rio environmental summit. Over the years, APC became active in promoting communications rights through international activities such as WSIS and the UN ICT Taskforce. Today, APC is an association of NGOs working in a variety of information and communications technology fields. “The majority of APC members are in developing countries or the former Soviet Union,” she explained. “Our members define our direction… They set our strategic goals. When they meet in biannual meetings they ask, ‘What can APC do to support our programmatic goals.’”
Karen described several of APC’s programs. They’ve developed a gender evaluation methodology for helping telecenters serve women in an equitable fashion. Recently, the association produced an open source tool called ActionApps, which is a freely available content management system adopted by NGOs around the world. She encouraged CTCNet members to take advantage of APC’s free tools, as well as participate in policy discussion. “On a practical level I think we need to start working together,” she said.
Theresa Williams of Catalytic Communities, jointly based in Washington DC Brazil, discussed her organization’s work in helping low-income neighborhoods shared community-based solutions with each other. They’ve created a dynamic database that allows community-based initiatives share detailed information about projects they’ve developed so they can be used by other communities. Some neighborhoods have also used the tool to help articulate their work in the process of applying for government grants. Currently, their website details 65 countries around the world, including the US and Brazil, Sudan, Israel and India. The site is available in English, Spanish and Portuguese, thanks to a team of community-based volunteers around the world.
“The results that have come out of this project are quite different from anything we predicted,” she said. “The community that accesses this information is much broader – it’s used by the press, for example, for newspapers and television programs.” After the movie City of God came out, Rio’s favelas received a lot of bad press, so some media outlets used the community programs listed in the site to highlight positive activities occurring in these low-income neighborhoods. Catalytic Communities has also launched a telecenter in downtown Rio, managed by staff and volunteers. It’s centrally located so it’s only one bus ride away from any corner of the city. The telecenter targets neighborhood leaders from around the city to improve their ICT skills and partner with each other on local development activities. The telecenter is also a community art gallery that changes its collection every two months. They’re now working to partner with telecenters around the world to create a network of community ICT leaders .
David Barnard then gave a presentation about the Southern African NGO Network (SANGONet). Their mission is to be a facilitator in the effective and empowering use of ICTs by development and social development groups in southern Africa. “We started out as an ISP, providing basic Internet and email services to NGOs,” he said. “That later developed into a range of ICT services, as well as work in ICT policy.” SANGONet continues to serve as an NGO ISP, though that role is being phased out over time, so they can focus on providing training, technology solutions and advocacy work.
“During the past year, SANGONet has initiated two separate activities for NGOs to come together to discuss and debate ICT issues,” including the Theta initiative, he said. More recently they launched a new initiative to demonstrate practical uses of ICTs in a community context. Another project, CINSA, is an 18-month pilot program to create a support network for community ICT for development initiatives.
Kakinda Daniel of SchoolNet Uganda talked about his organization, which was launched in 1997 by WorldLinks and the World Bank, but eventually became an independent NGO. Their core business is to offer technology professional development to educators, but Kakinda focused his remarks on Ugandan telecenters. They work with 15 school-based telecenters, so that they are used by students in the day, while the community has access the rest of the time.
“Setting up technology is expensive but it’s really the easy part of it,” he said. “The really big thing is creating useful activities for the community.” In Uganda, schooling is free only for the first seven years, so many young people drop out of school because they can’t afford secondary education. In response to this, they’ve developed their Youth IT initiative, which provides ICT training and entrepreneurial education to kids who’ve left formal schooling. Additionally, they’re working with AED and EDC to do peer youth counseling as part of an AIDS-awareness program. They also have a program called The World Starts With Me, helps expose youth to computers and Internet access so they can gain access to sex education and reproductive health resources.
Ruslan Nozdryakov from Project Harmony Russia spoke next. Based in Vermont, Project Harmony works to provide public Internet access across the former Soviet Union. They coordinate the US Department of State’s Internet Access and Training Program, which has initiated more than 90 telecenters in over 60 Russian cities. They provide free Internet access for socially disadvantage communities, and offer ICT-related assistance to educators, orphanages and others. More than 87.000 people have received training at their sites.
IATP now offers web-based education courses, usually in classes of 20 to 25 people. Recently, they’ve offered coursework on using the Internet in academic research, English for computing, and project management tools. They plan to open another 11 centers before the initiative wraps up its work in 2005, as well as a virtual university.
Departing dramatically from the other presentations, Claus Stoll of Fundacion Chasquinet in Ecuador presented a series of stories about South American telecenters through a series of digital photo galleries. A video set to the second movement of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, the photos showed the best and worst of life in Ecuador , slowly advancing to images of communities embracing ICTs for local development – young families, children playing, the weathered hands of farmers, lakes and mountains polluted by oil, waterfalls contaminated by industrialization, children wandering through villages built on landfills, “No Trespassing” signs warning of petrochemical pollution, old telephones being recycled for use at telecenters, indigenous communities learning how to use computers, microwave antennas, street children using the Internet, cheese makers who learned their craft online.