Regional overview

In order to differentiate the ICT use in the development programmes vis-à-vis its use in the non-formal education programmes, this section looks at ICT projects which employ ICT to support economic development, income generating ventures, agriculture, health, and promote overall quality of life. There are ICT projects in this area which are clearly meant to improve the livelihood, generate income and improve the economic standards of the community. There are those projects which employ ICT to achieve integrated development, that is to address the many concerns of a community from health, education, employment, livelihood, to agriculture and housing, among others, in an integrated manner. There are also projects which are more ICT-oriented, using the Internet resources to provide information and a way of communicating, in order to support day-to-day community life.

Use of ICT to improve livelihood and economic standards

Many projects are community-based, promoting the use of ICT to improve livelihood, business opportunities and economic standards. In Thailand, the Thai RuralNet project aims to transform rural capability in Thailand through ICT empowerment. The project has three major objectives. First, Ruralnet aims to transform rural capability through ICT empowerment. The rural communities can make the best use of ICT and will be able to actively participate in ICTs-driven sustainable community development, bridging the digital divide from the demand side. Second, the project will find practical models and practices towards sound business opportunities for the local communities. Third, the project will create an opportunity for the youth, especially students, to get involved in development issues. Along similar lines, in Cambodia, a project employs ICT to support the creation of a small woven-silk industry in the village which plans to sell products through the Internet. Also in this country, land mine and polio victims are employed to do digitisation work, using ICT to generate employment. Likewise, the JIVA Community Learning Centre in Haryana, India uses ICT to organise workshops in the areas of computers, pickle-making, sewing and video-making, which can help the village youth to earn a living.

Use of ICTs for integrated development

For some projects, ICTs are used to empower the community people, promoting integrated development of the various concerns of the community which impinge on their overall quality of life. Bangladesh’s Amader Gram (Our village) is a model project of integrated rural development through the capacity building of the disadvantaged community people, promoting the conservation of bio-diversity and sustainable use/mobilisation of natural resources and environmentally sound income generation activities. Since 1996, Amader Gram has helped to improve the lives of the disadvantaged in 20 villages under 2 Upazila (Sub-District) of Bagerhat (Rampal) and Khulna (Paikgacha) districts in Bangladesh. TheVillage Knowledge Centres under the M.S. Swaminathan Research Foundation aim at empowering local villagers to access the information they need to help improve their quality of life. 10 villages near Ponticherry, South India have been connected through a network of PCs, telephones, radio devices and e-mail. In this bottom up exercise, local volunteers gather information, feed it into an Intranet and provide access through nodes in different villages. The SARI (Sustainable Access in Rural India) Project is dedicated to demonstrating that the creation and deployment of ICTs in poor rural areas leads to improvements in health, empowerment, learning, and economic development amongst the poorest and most disadvantaged communities. The initial pilot phase will provide Internet access and applications through roughly 1000 connections in 350 villages in the Madurai District of the southeastern Indian State of Tamil Nadu.

The SMASY project in Malaysia brought IT to remote areas of the country, to help develop new skills and knowledge needed to survive. In the first phase of the project, sm@sy provided interactive touch-screen information kiosks villagers can use to connect to the Internet using pre-paid smart cards. In the second phase, sm@sy set up its own LAN-networked computer centre with 10 PCs, a printer, a scanner and Internet access. The sm@sy centre and kiosks are now managed by full-time staff under the supervision of sm@sy team members and the Village Security and Development Committee. Ever since sm@sy was set up in the Kampung Raja Musa, the local community has incorporated technology into many aspects of their daily lives. The community has grown in confidence, having been empowered with the tools to build a better quality of life.

In the Philippines, multipurpose community telecentres in four barangays (villages) in Mindanao were set up to deliver Internet services, with a primary focus on health care, agriculture, education and livelihood. The project aims to investigate the legal, financial, operational and technical issues surrounding the establishment and maintenance of MCTs in the Philippines; identify the specific information and communication needs of people in the rural villages; enlist the participation of local people and organisations in developing the conceptual framework for the MCTs; developed the capability of local partners to operate, manage and maintain the MCTs; developed the appropriate content in collaboration with the appropriate public, private and civil society; encourage local partners to develop their information applications; assessed the impact of MCTs on the rural villages; and deliver practical guidelines for expanding the MCTs coverage in Mindanao.

India’s JIVA Community Learning and Information Centres demonstrates how ICTs can be used effectively in rural settings to facilitate information-access, as well as to offer income generating opportunities to the village people.

Some work is also being done in Malaysia to address the gender divide in ICT. The Networking women project, under the auspices of the National Council of Women’s Organisations has started to provide networking facilities to women in voluntary organisations. Through this project, awareness will be created among women about the benefits of using ICT. The low level of ICT resources and the lack of knowledge and skills on ICT applications will be addressed. This project forms the hub of communication for the different women’s organisations, tabling reliable quantitative and qualitative information about their work. Furthermore, it will provide a platform to conduct research on “The Impact of ICT on Malaysian Women.”

Use of the Internet to provide access to a wealth of information resources to support community work

A few projects deal with the use of Internet, where websites are created to enable villagers to gain access to information to improve their livelihood and help market their products. Drishtee in India is an organisational platform for developing IT enabled services to rural and semi-urban populations, offering access to government programmes and benefits, market related information, and private information exchanges and transactions via computers. Using a tiered franchise and partnership model, Drishtee facilitates the creation of approximately 50,000 Information Kiosks all over India, which potentially serve a market of 500 million people. In less than two years, Drishtee has successfully demonstrated its concept in over 90 kiosks across five Indian states. Another project offers Internet service to tribal communities by providing computers and Internet access to around 40 villages. The project is centred on a weekly market that is visited by around 13.000 villagers. Similarly, in Sarawak, Malaysia, by bringing the Internet to Bario, Sarawak, another project sets out to identify needs and opportunities within such communities that can be satisfied by the innovative use of ICTs, and through action–oriented measures, to demonstrate how significant and sustainable development can be achieved by remote communities through ICTs.