|
I was reading some of the postings regarding what is a telecentre. While I do agree in some issues that Don expressed. I want to highlight based on my experience of working directly with impoverished groups and grassroots organizations that the use of a telecentres to attend their demands and needs. In my experience it does not exist a model. It depends on the dynamics of a community to community. Not on the dynamics of the telecentre because the telecentre is just a tool to full fill the needs and demands of a community. In some telecentres specially if you read the state of the art of telecentres in Latin america and the Caribe you will find that it exist telecentres with no tele. Connectivity is still and issue to sort out problems specially in urban marginalize areas and rural areas. The high costs of communication in Ecuador are the biggest challenge. But it did not stop the use of digital technologies in the community to attend their demands as an instrument linked to their own ways of communciation. So you find telecentres with no tele (no connectivity) and they are doing a good use of it and a strong impact in the community. I want to highlight in the list of a telecentre the social use of it to attend their demands. How do they use a telecentre as an instrument to access to medicaments, food, reduce violence, work with people who are disable and give them real opportunities of job and raise their standards of living, access to education, health services among others if the communities highlighted as a need. You also can find stories and examples in how a community use a telecentre when they are going through a problem As I learn more of the failures than from the success, one of the biggest mistakes that we did is to give importance to the instrument and not the dynamics of the community and their needs, that is why we confuse what is a telecentre and a cybercafe :-). The other mistake si that we talk the same works but the meaning is aboslutelly different. We are advocating inside [EMAIL PROTECTED] to call [EMAIL PROTECTED] using telecentres. Because the telecentre is just the instrument and nothing more. I also want to highlight that some of the countries specially the northern ones has money to support community base telecentres and the money came form the government. In our cases are the community who are finding tools to attend the demands and NGO's are doing the work of the government. The biggest agenda of connectivity have failed in most of the countries because they are still searching for a model that is profitable and they are not looking for the sustainability model that works in the communities based on their human capital. Sustainability for us is social, political, technological and financial based on the mission of the telecentre to attend the needs of the community. More information and examples you can find in the following url. www.tele-centros.org/tcparaque click english version We gathered stories and experiences of community base telecentres in the region as well. Hope this illustrates better. karin Board member of [EMAIL PROTECTED] Latin American and the Caribbean Community base telecenters network www.tele-centros.org |
_______________________________________________ telecentres mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mailman-new.greennet.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/telecentres To unsubscribe, send a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word UNSUBSCRIBE in the body of the message.
