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Hi Karin, Thank you for highlighting just how much
diversity we have in our movement and fantastic to read of your grass-root
efforts to engage Telecentre practitioners in the process of WSIS. I congratulate
you on endeavours to promote advocacy, participation and education, and look
forward to any ideas that help intermediaries express the realities of life
facing Telecentre practitioners. A difficulty I have in providing input into
this question of “What is a Telecentre” is exactly as you suggest; there
is no single model. Your post also leads to awareness that my input to date might
be construed as suggesting that all Australian Telecentre’s are funded
and fundamentally the same. As you rightly suggest they are not and my apologies
if I gave this impression. Many of our Telecentre’s are located in comparatively
affluent towns and communities and received start-up funds from Government. A
great many others are located in impoverished remote indigenous towns and
villages working with the very poor and illiterate. Like your example, many of
these remote “Telecentre’s” (usually not named as such) do
not have computers or telephones other than perhaps a single donated satellite
phone and exist with no Government support whatsoever. The reason they lack this
support is because they were ineligible for funds lacking as they do in capacity
to prove a potential for financial sustainability to Govt grant providers. This
was identified by many practitioners as one of the fundamental flaws of our
early grant processes – the fact recipients had to prove a capacity for
sustainability before any funds would be provided. Those who could not prove this
capacity did not receive any support. Yet there is a commonality of purpose of all
these Telecentre’s – All Telecentre’s work as part of our
communities for community gain. I don’t distinguish the efforts of a
Telecentre working with the very poor and illiterate as fundamentally any
different to a Telecentre working for a more affluent community yet dealing
with issues of youth suicide, drug abuse and local economic decline. All are
challenges worthy of our efforts and attention. One aspect we are yet to touch
on is the number of Telecentre’s working to mitigate social decline
brought about through the very introduction of ICT’s – Community Telecentre’s
smart enough to realise how ICT’s are a double edged sword offering gain
as well as loss, and developing strategies to mitigate the downside of community
ICT’s (perhaps another topic for another day). I’m not sure I completely agree that
all Telecentre’s are just “tools for community” because in
many remote communities the Telecentre is the community. These are the type of Telecentre
where the facility is often someone’s home; where all the planning, management
and resources are provided by the community; where gatherings are the community
coming together for a common purpose. A tool describes a device or instrument; community
describes a group of people associated by interest or purpose. In my experience
of remote Telecentre’s the term usually describes the people more than
the tools or technology – i.e. “We are the Telecentre”; not “Here
is the Telecentre”. I’m not sure I have properly expressed this
culture so I hope my words make sense. Rgds, Don |
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