Community Voices:
Wiring Communities
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Community Voices: Wiring Communities |
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Telecentres, originally setup to provide public telephone access in rural areas, are now joining the Information Age. Today, they usually include a range of information and communication technologies and services such as e-mail, World Wide Web access, fax and word processing, with some even offering tele-medicine or distance-education services. The typical telecentre is located in remote, rural regions or low-income urban areas and has a public access area with computers and telecom services, offices, training space and at least one full-time staff person. Since their start in 1985 their popularity has grown. Research done in 1993 by the Telematics Project at Odense University identified more than 200 telecentres in 11 countries and estimated demand is at least 2,500 times that in centres around the globe. Since proving their worth in such countries as Canada and Australia telecentres have taken on an important role in knocking down barriers to participation in today's networked world by those in developing countries. The International Development Research Centre, a leader in advancing telecentres, has identified five major types. They vary from basic telecentres that are funded by non-profit organizations and typically located in rural areas, to urban-based for-profit cybercafés, to more sophisticated multipurpose community telecentres that focus on specialized applications such as tele-medicine and tele-education. People are discovering the benefits of being able to connect through the Internet as well as by phone or fax at their local telecentre. For example, in Uganda the local market gardeners use the Internet to find out what the market prices are like in the surrounding towns and then use this information to decide where they should take their produce. As telecentres are established, new possibilities surface: a network of local telecentres where community groups can air their environmental concerns, which is being planned by a Dakar-based non-governmental organization, is one case in point. Though telecentres may be emerging with greater frequency their success as a development tool in developing countries has yet to be fully determined. "I see the potential of telecentres, but I am very critical as I don't see a lot of evidence that it's helping in the development process," says Ricardo Gomez, a senior program officer working on telecentre pilot projects at the International Development Research Centre. Even though there is controversy surrounding their use in the development community, they do appear to be meeting some community needs, especially in developing regions that lack needed and affordable telecommunications infrastructure. And when staffed by knowledgeable, community-oriented people, they become much more than just a place. Instead, they turn into what Fuchs in Little engines that did: Case histories from the global telecentre movement describes as "the locus for the diffusion of skills and access to tools associated with the Information Society." [telecentres enter the information age]
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