[Telecentres] Counting telecentres

[Cristian Berrío Zapata]

I agree with Hannah on the importance of skating clearly the mission of
the group, otherwise we can lost ourselves easily and disintegrate what
seems to be born as a multiethnic amicable possibility for
“ICT-sustainable development” discussion and production.
 
Our vision must be clear, concrete, wide enough but refraining from
terms that have no clarified reference (peace, love, brother ship, etc),
inspiring and shared by all. The list can easily create en e-democracy
where we can propose the vision and built it via e-voting. Once our
vision is clear then we can get to the item of selecting the leaders and
then, we will be ready to design the programs, goals and teams required.
 
Sounds possible or a little bit like Walden II?
 
To advance some, I propose we DO NOT focus on how different are
Telecentre proposals BUT on what we find in common: I would describe
Telecentres as a movement (first basic, we are community, group, no
one-alone-mind) that looks for improving the world (here concrete
reference must be proposed to avoid getting into endless debates, i.e.
what we consider basic world problems and needs, what we define as
poverty, what means respect for diversity, community, etc) through
application of ICTs in communities through a set of techniques called
Telecentres (here we try to identify the basic concepts underlining the
diverse kind of telecentre programs), giving priority to certain areas
of human life (here we enumerate possible areas of application not
eliminating other but referring some of them as priorities and trying to
define the levels of importance), on the understanding that knowledge is
the gate that make a better life possible, and ICTs the most powerful
tool known today to develop it.
 
If we can do this, we can begin to produce a level of systematic
guidelines that would feed practitioners and investigators around the
world, making our vision possible.
 
The debate is open

 
Cristian Berrío Zapata
cberrioz at cable.net.co
cristianberrioz at hotmail.com
 
-----Mensaje original-----
De: telecentres-bounces at wsis-cs.org
[mailto:telecentres-bounces at wsis-cs.org] En nombre de Hannah Beardon
Enviado el: Viernes, 24 de Septiembre de 2004 07:10 a.m.
Para: telecentres at wsis-cs.org
Asunto: [Telecentres] Counting telecentres
 
Dear group,
 
I have really enjoyed reading all the contributions so far and am happy
to leave you to work out the structure etc.  However, I am still not
clear on what we are trying to achieve and think it is really important
that we decide what those one or two advocacy points to discuss might be
(if I have blatantly missed something here please let me know!).
 
I agree with Barbara that perhaps mapping telecentres is not the best
use of our time and expertise at this point.  Although undoubtedly it
would be an interesting exercise, it is perhaps one for which funding
could be sought and real time and effort put into it (and properly
recompensed!).  As Barbara said we need to be clear about why we would
be mapping, what kinds of categories and how the initial data colelction
exercise could be built on to achieve the kinds of outcomes that
Cristian and Gaspar mention - or others that the project may identify.  
 
I think the term telecentre covers a multitude of sins (as well as
fantastic initiatives).  There is no universal model and some are more
oriented to the needs of the poor than others, some more successful in
making a difference to poverty and marginalisation than others.  I
believe that you cannot have an impact on poverty just by putting in a
few computers and so it is useful to underrstand what it is in a
telecentre that makes it pro-poor.   Perhaps we could pick a couple of
important issues to debate in order to provide some non-negotiables that
are at the base of pro-poor and empowering ICT4D work?
 
Hannah
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://mailman-new.greennet.org.uk/pipermail/telecentres/attachments/20040924/6d39b309/attachment-0001.htm