Reported
by Bidisha Pillai, Digital Opportunity Channel Manager, from Geneva.
Most ICT initiatives till
date have been in the form of pilot projects that have worked well in a
small community. To upscale this to the national level would need
not only excellent planning, but also support from a wide range of
players. OneWorld South Asia organized a Panel Discussion "From Pilot
Syndrome to Up scaling ICT initiatives - the Grassroots Perspective" at
PrepCom 3 on 28th September in this context.
The discussion was opened by
Tracey Naughton, a development communication consultant working in the
field for over twenty years. She shared the example of three ICT based
development initiatives in southern Africa, which were based on three
different partnership models, government with community, private sector
with community and community with a donor organisation. The first two
examples failed because the programmes did not connect with the end
users or the grassroots communities in the first place. There was a
complete absence of needs assessment and capacity building. The
last project was based on the initiative being taken from the community
who linked up with a donor organisation. This was the only successful
programme because it started off as a development centre providing
vocational training and then further moved on to integrate ICTs in
their programme. It was a completely bottom up approach which ensured
the success of the project.
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Basudev, a grassroots
community worker from Nepal, then shared his experience of running a
community library in his village. The model there too was completely
community based and started off as an initiative by the villagers
themselves. The library has activities ranging from promoting
education, health awareness, awareness about environment protection,
gender equality, skill training, computer training and livelihood
opportunities. The library is also an access point for the open
knowledge network, which promotes the collation and sharing of local
content in local languages. The programme is based on the requirements
of the villagers and run by the villagers to improve the quality of
their lives. The community has also been able to develop a multi
stakeholder partnership by engaging with NGOs and the government who
support their initiative. Basu laid emphasis on the fact that an
information society should focus on the development needs of the people
and aim to address those issues as a priority. He hoped his model would
serve as a good example to the policy makers at WSIS.
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Prof Subbaiah Arunachalam,
Trustee, OneWorld South Asia, shared his experience of Indian ICT based
initiatives similar to those being run by Basu in Nepal. He showcased
an initiative that is currently on in India, which is looking at taking
similar knowledge centres to every village in India by the year 2007,
thereby up scaling ICT based development initiatives. It is based on
the premise of how science and technology, or information and
communication technologies could be used for poverty alleviation,
better education, gender equality and improved livelihood options. The
manner in which this is being implemented is once again the community
based model, where in the first instance the people were asked to
identify their problems and information needs. Based on this,
information is provided to them and they are then provided the training
to enable them to access and use that information to their advantage.
The key focus is on the people and their needs and technology is being
looked at only as an enabler in the entire mission.
It is therefore evident that
an information society cannot exist in a vaccum and needs to be formed
with the objective of furthering development goals that would
ultimately have a positive and long lasting effect on the lives of
people. It would need to further recognize the importance of multi
stakeholder partnerships, involving governments, civil society
organisations, private enterprise and most importantly the grassroots
communities who need to own the process to ensure sustainability.
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