Forgot your password?
New user?
Document Actions
Telecentres
This page contains resources on all aspects related to telecentres, for telecenter operators, telecentre project managers, trainers, policy makers and researchers.
Telecentres exist in almost every country although they go by different names. There is no one single model for creating a telecentre. They are as diverse as the communities they serve. Most telecentres, however, provide some form of ICT services for social and economic development.
Resources focus on:
- Factors that influence their success, sustainability, replicability and upscaling.
- Policies and regulations that can be put in place to promote the establishment and sustainability of telecentres.
Developing Management Information Systems for Community Learning Centres: A Guidebook
This guidebook presents in a systematic way the steps to develop and operate a management information system for community learning centres (CLC-MIS). It targets primarily all individual who are responsible for operating and managing a CLC. It can also be useful for education administrators at the local, district, and provincial/state levels, as well as for those at the central education Ministries , in building nationwide CLC-MIS networks.
Telecenter-in-a-Box
This is a software package of 2 CDs for telecentres. It includes Office productivity tools OpenOffice.org, Internet browser Firefox, instant manager Pidgin, graphics software GIMP and many other applications that telecentres need. This is a collaboration between the Bangladesh Telecentre Network and the Bangladesh Open Source Netowork.
telecentre.org Academy
The telecentre.org Academy is a global initiative to provide telecentre managers with ongoing training, capacity building, and professional development opportunities. Structured as a consortium of national academies and partners with a small global support unit, the Academy supports and coordinates training programmes, promotes the collaborative development and sharing of resources, and maintains accreditation and certification standards.
Training Commons Modules to Capacitate Telecentre Managers
These manuals will address various questions in four main areas – grassroots marketing; grassroots communications, entrepreneurship, and info-mediary skills (managing telecentres). The manuals will seek to provide valuable information that will help both trainers of telecentre managers and the managers themselves learn about different aspects of telecentre management, to become more knowledgeable, and to gain some specialized skills so that they can make a success out of the telecentres they run.
Mobile Phone and Telecenter: A comparative case study of Bangladesh and Uganda
The aim of this paper is to examine the utility of ICT4D project efficacy. Particular consideration is given to the Village Phone Programme in Bangladesh and the Nakaseke Multipurpose Community Telecentre in Uganda. The results show that the Village Phone Programme, which focuses primarily on the economic empowerment of project beneficiaries, and the Nakaseke Telecentre, which prioritizes expanding service provision, both fall short to take into consideration the extreme poor and disadvantaged; a remarkable weakness in conventional ICT4D programming. In addition, it indicates that project duty bearers in conventional ICT4D projects are not directly accountable and participation is not particularly people centered.
Deconstructing Community Participation in Telecentre Projects
This paper critiques the assumed link that telecentre literature makes between community participation and telecentre success. It provides a review of the perspectives of the impact of telecentres, discusses the notion of community, factors of information system evaluation, stakeholder analysis and its relationship with participation, and finally the author provides a critique of telecentres in relation to participation.
Researching ICT-Based Enterprise in Developing Countries: Analytical Tools and Models
This paper provides a guide for those researching ICT-based enterprises in developing countries. Examples of such enterprises would include telecentres, cybercafés, mobile phone shops, Internet service providers, software companies, IT training firms, IT consultancies, hardware assemblers, data entry operators, and so forth. The paper offers a series of 'lenses' through which to investigate these enterprises. They move from basic classificatory models to those that can analyse competitive strategy, impact, context and the enterprise lifecycle. In each case, the paper provides an explanation of basic concepts, and a sense of what research using the particular framework would offer.
Telecenter Operator Toolkit
The toolkit available in a disc includes resources for telecentre owners and operators. It offers business tools, training resources, marketing materials and a step-by-step guide to using the toolkit materials.
Incorporating Predictors of Success for Telecenter Projects: A Qualitative Analysis of 17 Developing Countries
There remains a paucity of data discussing why some telecenters succeed and some fail. This research uses grounded theory to analyse telecentres in 17 countries to better understand the conditions that may lead to telecentre success or failure. Using the current literature, the research provides a condensed list of possible key predictors of success for telecentre projects to effectively reach their target populations and uses this list as a structure to present findings from the qualitative analysis.
Forging Innovations: Community Multimedia Centres in Nepal
This is a collection of case studies on Community Multimedia Centres (CMCs) in Nepal. It is intended to showcase the interesting and diverse growth of this initiative in spite of conflict and the lack of community radio regulation in the country. Three CMCs are each discussed using four categories: location and context, organizational structure, programmes, and sustainability. By examining three centres concurrently, common themes emerged in the overall functionality of CMCs in Nepal. This study identifies some key issues which can assist CMCs towards their goal of providing ICT access to poor and marginalized communities in Nepal.
Community Information and Technology Centres: Focus on South-East Asia
The study aims to take stock of the development of various types of community centres with a view to setting the path for future action. The recommendations submitted by the author should help those planning to embark on similar projects to take into consideration what might or might not work.
Policy Brief in ICT Applications in the Knowledge Economy, No. 3: ICT for the Economic and Social Development of Rural Communities
The establishment of ICT access points poses numerous challenges, particularly for those located in extremely remote areas that are inaccessible by roads and/or have no power supply. In this policy brief, we feature appropriate policies drawn from the experience of successes and failures to promote the establishment of sustainable ICT access points for the economic and social development of rural communities.
telecentre magazine
The magazine acts as an interface between telecentre leaders, solution providers, knowledge repositories, and decision makers. It raises awareness about telecentres, serving a platform for advocacy and the development of a stronger telecentre ecosystem. It is also a repository of knowledge with various success stories, failures and lessons learned from the field. Ultimately, this will help in sustainability and upscaling of telecentres around the globe.
High Impact, Pro-Poor e-Governance Applications: Identifying 'Killer Applications' and Best Practice Models of e-Governance through Community e-Centers in the Philippines
The purpose of the study is to find a way to identify services that genuinely make a difference to people in their interactions with Governments. The expected outcome is increased impact and utilization of e-governance and e-government services in the Philippines and Asia-Pacific over the longer term. This study is a collaboration between the Commission of ICT in the Philippines, UNDP Philippines and UNDP-APDIP.
APDIP e-Note 19 - Telecentre Technology: The application of free and open source software
The affordability of FOSS and its openness to modification and localization is contributing to the sustainbility of telecentres, and more broadly, to empowered communities and poverty reduction. This APDIP e-Note explores the benefits of using FOSS applications in telecentres with case studies from Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, Brazil, Egypt and Sub-Saharan Africa.
Developing Content for the Community
This case study details the e-Knowledge Public Domain project that aims to extend the use of Community e-Centers in the Philippines from simply being a means to access information to becoming local knowledge production centres. The strategy is to develop appropriate ICT skills in communities to enable community members to create relevant digital content. As its first activity, the project worked with the residents of Payatas – a poor community in Quezon City, to help address their health information needs.This case study assessed the situation in the target community, the implementation strategy and the outcome of the project.
Philippine Community eCenter Portal
This portal is rich with training resources for telecentre managers and operators, as well as for trainers of telecentre staff. The portal include training resources on: telecentre management; marketing/business plan preparation; technical requirements and maintenance; women's use of telecentres; monitoring and evaluation; and basic IT skills.
APDIP e-Note 15 - Telecentre sustainability: Financing ICTs for the poor
In spite of their promising development opportunities, telecentres have also been met with criticism, especially for not being sustainable. In response to this criticism this APDIP e-Note examines different ownership and financing models for telecentres, emphasizing the balance between subsidy and revenue. It examines how these models can assist in ensuring long-term financial sustainability and how both the private sector and civil society can be mutually involved in this process.
APDIP e-Note 14 - Telecentre 2.0: Beyond piloting telecentres
This APDIP e-Note argues that with telecentres now being part of national roll-out programmes in many countries throughout the Asia-Pacific region, a second generation of telecentres is evolving. Telecentre 2.0. is a general model that does away with further piloting of telecentres as a development mechanism. This APDIP e-Note outlines how the Telecentre 2.0 model can help countries that do not have established telecentres on a country-wide basis in doing so by drawing on previous and well-documented experiences from other countries.
Review of Research on Rural PC Kiosks
This paper presents the synthesis of a comprehensive research study conducted by Microsoft Research India, University of California, Berkeley, and London School of Economics, on why it is difficult to sustain development-oriented kiosks, and what are the factors for success.
A Framework for Designing Telecentres
This Framework is organized in the sequence of a logical approach to the design of information systems that are intended to deliver socio-economic benefits via telecentres for the purpose of community level development and poverty reduction. The audience for this Framework is the institutions or individuals involved in, or contemplating, the setting up of telecentres.
Making the Connection: Scaling Telecenters for Development
This book identifies and discusses the most pressing issues facing the global telecenter movement, presents a condensed view of the current state of knowledge with regard to telecentres, and highlights possible paths forward. THe primary audience for this book consists of individuals, firms and organizations that are involved, either directly or indirectly, in the planning and deployment of telecentres, with an emphasis on large-scale deployments. Secondary audience consists of all those who might benefit from telecentres and therefore would be interested in better understanding their evolution and future potential.
Empowering the Poor: Information and Communications Technology for Governance and Poverty Reduction - A Study of Rural Development Projects in India
This publication systematically analyzes 18 projects in India that uses information and communications technology (ICT) for the benefit of poor people, and provides recommendations on how ICT can be applied to the massive, widespread and seemingly intractable problems of poverty. The publication also ranks the projects by their relevance, service delivery, community participation and empowerment, equality in decision-making and benefits, sustainability, replicability and their prospects for being scaled-up.
Guidebook on Developing Community e-Centres in Rural Areas: Based on the Malaysian experience
Over the past years, governments and development agencies have tried to bring ICT services to rural communities, very often through the use of community e-centres (CeCs). The guidebook identifies guiding principles and fundamental requirements for the establishment of rural ICT services based on the experience of rural ICT projects in Malaysia. It is hoped that this will help to promote and improve the implementation of rural community ICT services that can contribute to the reduction of poverty among the people in the rural areas of Asia and the Pacific.
telecentre.org
telecentre.org is a community of people and organizations committed to creating resources that telecentres need to succeed. The community has over 500 resource related to telecentres.
Indonesia - Information and Communication Technologies for Rural Development: Issues and Options (Volume 2 of 2)
During the concept review of the main report (Volume I), one of the key recommendations was to conduct a more detailed assessment of telecentres in Indonesia to assess what types of business models and public-private partnerships would work in the Indonesian context. This second volume documents past and present telecentre projects in Indonesia and assess key success and failure factors, in order to develop recommendations to support effective design of programmes aimed at providing community access ICT facilities and services in rural areas.
Indonesia - Information and Communication Technologies for Rural Development: Issues and Options (Volume 1 of 2)
This report report aims to identify the policies, technologies, institutions and investments needed to improve the access of rural communities to information services in Indonesia. Specifically, the report would illustrate the opportunities that community access centres and ICT tools offer policy makers and practitioners in agricultural and rural development.
Village Phone Replication Manual
This manual is an invaluable how-to source for setting up a Village Phone project. It contains a realistic, practical, and detailed set of instructions, templates, and lessons learned, and it is generic enough to be applied in any context where a Village Phone initiative can help empower people and promote development. It draws on Grameen’s experience in both Bangladesh and Uganda and establishes a template for creating sustainable initiatives that simultaneously bring telecommunications to the rural poor, create viable new businesses for microentrepreneurs, and expand the customer base of telecommunications companies. No two implementations of the Village Phone project will be exactly alike. Each country will have unique variables, participants and environments. However, it is expected that there will be common structures, applications, and processes – all of which are described in detail in the manual.
International Community Telecentre Resource Site
This site is addressed to community telecentre developers, practitioners and researchers. It contains an annotated and classified inventory of resources on local information and informatics initiatives such as community multimedia and multipurpose telecentres. There are four major sections in this site: Projects and Initiatives, Research, Resource Organizations and Telecentre Technology, each covering an aspect of the process of engendering and appropriating ICTs for community development around the world.
Building e-Community Centres for Rural Development: Report of the Regional Workshop, Bali, Indonesia, 8-14 December 2004
This is the Proceedings of the Building e-Community Centres for Rural Development Workshop co-organized by UNESCAP and ADBI. The Workshop's objectives were to examine the various issues related to e-Community Centres in the Asia-Pacific region and share good practices that can be used as models for successful development and operation of these centres.
A Guide to Community Multimedia Centres: How to Get Started and Keep Going
This guide covers a full range of topics for setting up and operating telecentres, including, choosing appropriate equipment and technology, human resources, developing skills and training, organizational structures and strategies, participation of communities, stakeholders and users, sourcing information and media content, sustainability, research and evaluation.
Community Technology Centres (CTC) Start-Up Manual
First published in 1997, the CTC Center Start-Up Manual is widely recognized as a principal guide for establishing CTCs and serves as an organized patchwork of CTC experiences. With support from the Surdna Foundation, the manual was updated in January 2003 to reflect developing CTC experiences and needs. The manual include issues related to: determining programme focus, staffing, software selection, hardware and security, outreach, self-assessment, budgeting, funding and preparing a business plan.
Handbook for Telecenter Staffs
This handbook of training materials for telecentre staff was created by a team from Cornell University, in collaboration with telecentres throughout the world. The handbook is organized in 10 modules. It addresses the wide range of different factors that may come into play in the planning and daily functioning of a telecentre for community development. It is not only a self-learning tool and management guide for telecentre staffs, but also a reference resource to guide the reader toward a future search for additional educational materials. The Handbook may also serve as a reference tool for organizations involved in telecentre development, or as a guide for trainers of telecentre staffs.
Sustainable Telecentres: A Guide for Government Policy
For at least a decade governments and nonprofit organizations, often supported by bilateral aid, have experimented with telecentres as a means to extend access to computers, the Internet, and other information and communication services to rural and low-income urban areas of developing countries. Results have been mixed. This Note proposes a guide for government policy on telecentres conceived as private businesses—though with development functions—that are commercially sustainable beyond initial public support.
Bangladesh Telecentre Network
Bangladesh Telecentre Network (BTN) is a coalition of organizations for fostering the telecentre movement in Bangladesh. It is an inclusive network, where any individual or institution committed to bring ICT to the doors of the common people across the country can be a member or partner to collectively promote the idea of building sustainable information and knowledge system for the poor.
Eldis resources on telecentres
Eldis aims to share the best in development, policy, practice and research. Eldis has a collection of 26,000 full text documents free to download, including 24 subject-focused resource guides, country profiles, newsfeed, etc.
Zunia's Resources on Telecentres
Zunia is an online network for knowledge exchange among development professionals worldwide. Its communities cover major topic areas with more than 200 partnering organizations to help guide content. Zunia was launched in July 2009. Previously, the knowledge-sharing site of Development Gateway was dgCommunities. All the content from that site was migrated to Zunia.
Bonbudong, 3rd Floor Songdo Techno Park, 7-50 Songdo-dong, Yeonsu-gu, Incheon City, Korea Telephone: +82 32 245 1700 to 2
Facsimile: +82 32 245 7712