ChangeWaves

spent the last weeks of December and beginning of January trying to find institutions that will partner with Uganda Development Services (UDS) and telecentre.org to develop curricula for the East African edition of the Telecentre Academy.
It was not an uphill task like I had anticipated. Many higher institutions of learning in Uganda have departments that are in charge of external training or developing tailor made trainings and courses for organizations/institutions. It came as a surprise and an eye opener in so many ways but that was only the beginning.
They delivered the proposals on time except for a few. There were follow-up calls made to ensure you got the proposals. I was taken aback! Sometimes things are handled nonchalantly especially in government institutions or departments. This new attitude surprised me.
Anyway I delivered the proposals which will be looked at by UDS and of course the curriculum development process will start.
But I also learnt a few things. Many would be curriculum developers didn’t know what telecentres are!
My response “they are like cyber cafes with a social mission”
“Most of these are situated in rural or semi urban areas to help the rural people have access to ICTs in order to develop themselves.”
In came the second question: how can people who earn less than a dollar a day be attracted to computers or even the internet?
Now that was a hard one. Many of the Telecentre Leaders Forums that I have been a part of have discussed such questions over and over again. Some pessimists have even considered saying they are “white elephants”
Well, initially I thought so. That was three years ago or so when I first joined the telecentre movement.
I learnt how people (read rural folks) are using telecentres as meeting places where they chat about issues that affect their community, business men learn how to use the computer to operate their businesses better, school going children access library facilities, people use the community radio for education and entertainment among other things.
I then thought that it is bad that only computers come to ones mind when you talk about telecentres.
Given the challenges that they face especially sustainability, management and the like, the academy will come in handy to teach the managers how to manage these telecentres better, involve the community so they accept the telecentre as their own and handle issues of sustainability both social and financial.
I can’t wait to see the academy up and running.