The Community Tele-centres Network Project
In order to achieve its mission of creating access to information
on child rights and/or related issues through Research, Documentation,
ICT models, Education, Advocacy and Networking, the Centre plans
to put in place an ambitious project whereby it is going to establish
a Community Tele-centres Network (CTN) in all the 27 districts in
the country by 2015. This is in line with the targets for the Millennium
Development Goals (MDGs), a set of measurable goals set by world
leaders at the United Nations Millennium Summit in September 2000
to combat poverty, hunger, disease, illiteracy, environmental degradation,
and discrimination against women by that year.
The Community Tele-centres Network will aim to provide urban
and rural communities with access to modern information and communications
technologies. The essential element of the CRIDOC’s Community
Telecentre network is the network of volunteers, without whom
the network will simply not exist at all.
CRIDOC will also endeavour to facilitate networking among community
telecentres worldwide, through the sharing of information, experiences
and resources related to practical tele-centre implementation
and management. Thus, an activity happening in a community in
Louisiana (in USA), or Rajastan (in India) could be shared with
remote communities in Chitipa District in Malawi.
The new project will also be complimented by the organisation’s
website (www.cridoc.net),
which is already one of the few and most useful on-line advocacy
tools in Malawi. The new online service will also contain an annotated
and classified inventory of resources of potential use to community
telecentres, multimedia centres and other local information and
informatics initiatives.
The site, which will place special emphasis on the needs of the
developing countries, will also include both links to a range
of external resources and relevant information resources from
a number of programmes implemented by a wide range of organisations
globally. T
In order to make the project effective, CRIDOC is currently restructuring
its website to make it the first site to become multilingual in
Malawi. Besides English, we are also in the process of developing
the two main sections of the site featuring the two main vernacular
languages of Malawi, namely; Chichewa and Chitumbuka.
In conclusion, the Community Tele-centres Network (and the current
organisation’s website) will be a force to counter current
social and economic trends by bringing the application of information,
communications, office and Internet technologies closer to individuals,
voluntary and community groups and businesses in both urban and
rural communities in Malawi, which will also – it is hoped
– benefit the entire SADC and African region.
However, it is imperative to note that this project will take
a number of years for implementation to take any effect, since
it will require a considerably huge amount of investment particularly
in the establishment of housing infrastructure as well as acquisition
of state of art equipment.
Which is why, in the meantime, the Centre hence plans to embark
on the establishment of the Mobile Library Service” as a
way of laying the foundation as well as complementing on the seemingly
ambitious Community Tele-centres Network project.
Other Useful Links
1. Using Telecentres: Telecentres Or "Telecottages"
Are Helping Those At The Margins Of The Knowledge Economy Gain
And Apply New Understandings And Skills. http://www.col.org/Knowledge/ks_telecentres.htm
2. Jumping between New and Traditional Media: A New Training
Kit
03-07-2003 (UNESCO, APC)
3. Rethinking telecentres in the Second World: Knowledge demands,
remittance flows, and microbanks, By Scott S. Robinson
http://www.fao.org/sd/CDdirect/CDre0055g.htm
|
