[Telecentres] RE: [Telecentres] Basic Telecentre Items

[David Leeming PFnet]

Karin,
 
That is a fantastic story and I really admire the work you are doing and the
women, farmers and others who have been empowered through the telecentre
access and associated community development. I have circulated it in our
Solomon Islands ICT Working Group list. 
 
Immediately, someone pointed out something that had occurred to me, and I
was interested to see how soon it was brought up:
 
There is maybe a sustainability issue here, that the centre was too directly
associated with the community development activity (women's empowerment).
The activity obviously had great results for women's empowerment but not
such good results for the telecentre.
 
In our research we have shown that it is important that the centre has the
full ownership, and if it is regarded as belonging to one section or
interest, people will not utilise it as much, or worse - in one case when we
were field testing some technology without proper community participation,
the test facility was razed to the ground. It was perceived as not being a
community asset, but attached to an entity with political associations.
 

David Leeming PFnet 
Solomon Islands
www.peoplefirst.net.sb/general/pfnet.htm


 

  _____  

From: telecentres-bounces at wsis-cs.org
[mailto:telecentres-bounces at wsis-cs.org] On Behalf Of Karin Delgadillo
Poepsel
Sent: Friday, 8 October 2004 10:46 a.m.
To: Don Cameron
Cc: telecentres at wsis-cs.org
Subject: Re: [Telecentres] RE: [Telecentre's] Basic Telecentre Items


Hi Don,

Thanks for your message. I do agree with you and your approach because that
is responding to the dynamic of Australia and the system in place there.
Reading your mail, make me realize that we are fractals of the system and
that means that we live in a systemic society. Communities responds to the
structure of that society that are in place  and their rules. In Ecuador we
have grassroots communities, indigenous cofanes communities as an example,
as well as slum areas that are organized as a community, street children and
other type of communities as you explain when people gather and meet because
they have a need or interest. In this context telecentres plays a role.
telecentres, people and community can not been seen isolated and we need to
see in  a holistic way. In your  experience remote telecentres is the
community. In my experience as well, community or communal houses are the
meeting point and the telecentre plays a role in it, normaly people do not
call telecentre. They call "jambi huasi" or casa communal,  I mean it
reflects  their cultural background and reality. I do agree with your
concept we are the telecentre not the telecentre is there, that is why in
this concept of communal house or jambi huasi, computer, loud speaker, mural
newspaper or just the assembly are tools that attends the needs of that
community. You call telecentre, i do call also telecentre in the
international scenario but I do not call telecentre in the local escenario,
people call as they feel responds to their cultural reality. The importance
is to highlight the concept of a  telecentre responding to the dynamics of a
community and how digital technologies among others could respond to the
needs of that community. We described a telecentre as: Community telecentres
are powerful tool for supporting community development through the use of
digital technologies linked to their own ways of communication. Community
telecentres represents and experiment in using digital technologies as tools
for human development within a community. The stress here is on the social
use and appropriation of technological tools  and communication tools that
responds to the needs and demands of the community . Community telecentres
are places for social encounter and interaction, for learning, for personal
growth and for mobilizing efforts to address community problems and needs.
But the telecentres do not only respond to the communication and information
needs of the community. Instead, they are also an instrument for measuring
the impact telecomnunication tools have in advancing social equity and
economic development at the grassroots. 

In remote and impoverished groups in Ecuador and Latin American, people are
thinking how I am going to survive, not I need computers or a telecentre. 70
percent of the population lives under the line of poverty, so their needs
are focused on how I am going to eat and the community house is the center
or focal point to gather meet and plan.  A telecentre emerge in this concept
because internet could be a tool to attend such demands linked to their own
ways of communication if they got connectivity if they do not got
connectivity they find ways on how digital technologies can be used . Let me
explain  or describe a story so people understand better what I mean
specially in the concept that are not the telecentre it is the dynamic.
Apparently this is story is negative but it is not. Sorry for the  lenght of
the message.



PASTOCALLE: MATANGA AND PUCARA INDIGENOUS COMMUNITY

CATALYSING LIFE-ALTERING CHANGES

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This very special story began in February 1998  and continues until today.
In sharing it, I will not mention names because of the sensitive nature of
what is currently going on in the community and because the women in these
indigenous communities requested me to protect their privacy.

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Pastocalle, a town in the Andean highlands, is located 3.100 meters above
sea level. The population is made up of indigenous people and mestizos; most
are small farmers. The community decided at one point that they had to have
a computer. In order to buy one, they sold many of their guinea pigs and
other animals. Having finally acquired a computer, they installed it in
their community house. Chasquinet helped connect Pastocalle through the
telecentre, which was used by the farmers to their advantage when their
potato crops were hit by a strange plague of ants. (But I am getting ahead
of the story)

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The farmers, at their wits' en on how to save their crops, decided to make
not one but several costly trips to Quito to try to secure help from the
Ministry of Agriculture. The government was, after all, supposed to help the
people. But the visits to the Ministry office produced nothing for the
farmers. Just as when the farmers were about to give up, the farmers met
Chasquinet which put them in touch with other farmers organisations who
could help them. And help the farmers of Pastocalle got. Plenty in fact.
Eventually, thorough the help of other farmer organisations and by accessing
information through the Internet, the farmers of Pastocalle were able to
solve the problem.

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But there's more.

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To get the community to learn how to run and use the telecentre, Chasquinet
conducted a series of training with the people. The women were most active
in the entire exercise. They were mostly concerned about protecting the
ecosystem of the community. And it was most natural for them to mount a
campaign to declare the zone between Matanga a Pucara an ecological reserve
thereby preventing the sale of the land to a Dutch company that wanted to
build a hotel in the area. From strategising and running the campaign, it
was the women who took the driver's seat, so to speak.  Using the internet
and local Ecuadorian media, the women of Pastocalle received a lot of
support for their advocacy.

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The experiences of the women encouraged the local community to get
interested how to harness the tools of the Internet for their various goals.
The young people, for example, decided they wanted to create webpages to
promote ecotourism. The women also started ways to use the Internet to
promote their clothing micro-enterprise by streamlining administration and
marketing. So the whole community began learning about the other worlds
beyond the Andean highlands. What could be the better way of ending this
story?

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Except that this is not yet the end.

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One day, a group of girls approached  me with a bit of gossip. The boys,
they said in the hushed tones, were using the Internet to access
pornographic sites. I caught myself just in time before I blurted out to
agree with them that the boys were wrong. Instead, I asked the girls about
what they felt aout the situation and why they thought it was wrong for the
boys to be ogling at naked women in the Internet.

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What was revealed to me afterwards triggered the discovery of a very serious
problem in the community -one that is not easy to confront and address. I
found out that most of the furs ad been raped by an uncle or some other male
relative. Concerned for the girls, I brought out the information with the
community women. I soon realised that the women's sufferings ran long and
deep. Many of them had also been raped by their male relatives.

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I began to use the internet to look for support and healing, because
unfortunately no one here in Ecuador except the elite has access to this
type of emotional help and therapy. Meanwhile, the internet training
sessions with the girls and women continued; but most often than not, these
sessions became a venue for the women to  open up about their experiences of
domestic abuse and their husband's alcoholism. The sessions became a forum
for mutual support and solidarity. An energy of caring was created and
fostered and practices of solidarity began to develop. The women quickly
transformed the telecentre into a space of their own where they could
collectively support and heal each other.

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Meanwhile, the men became uneasy and annoyed. By then, we had decided to
prioritise the women's training course, which I now think was a mistake. The
men felt envious of the attention the women were getting. They became
increasingly bothered by the courses's strong emphasis on harnessing
self-esteem.

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Until one day, a woman whom I will call Rosita, arrived at our training
session with a black eye and blood on her cheek. In between sobs, Rosita's
story  of long-standing abuse and humiliation in the hands of her husband
poured out. I felt then that it was important for Rosita to cry and share
what had happened to her with the group which diminished her feelings of
isolation.

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A week after, Rosita returned to the telecentre, beaming. For the first time
in her life, she told us, she stood up to her husband. She defended herself,
and more than that, she hit back at her husband using  a stick to deliver
the message that she will no longer cower in fear. Rosita was triumphant and
it showed.

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Not soon after disaster struck. The community's leadership changed hands and
two days after Rosita's brave confrontation with  her husband, the
community's new directors closed down the telecentre. Cries of protest form
the women, young people, and children fell on deaf ears.

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I have often asked myself, what lessons have we learned form this
experience?. Chasquinet never earned a penny from its work with  the
Pastocalle. Our relationship with the community was based on exchange -they
give us sacks of corn in return of our work with them. But after working for
years with this community, we got much more than the sacks of corn in the
fair exchange. We were made richer by the invaluable lessons we learned from
the many brave women in the community.

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In my view, the telecentre and the Internet when they were integrated into
the community became tools for aiding community development. They also
served as instruments to unearth deeper community problems, those that
festered and were kept hidden like rape and incest. However, these tools are
not in themselves the forces that finally altered the relations of power
within the community. The power to transform the relations in the community
comes from the women's new-found strength, their realisation that it is
alright to demand changes for their betterment, and the discovery of their
voices by which to assert themselves.

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In the face of such changes, the men felt vulnerable. Blaming outsiders
proved the easiest way for them to cope with the new situation. Chasquinet
was after all the one conducting the trainings, and it was after sessions
began that the problems with the women also started. Ego, Chasquinet must be
teaching the women "bad things".

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The telecentre remains closed and the community directors refuse to re open
it or give any information about their plans for it. Despite this, the women
of Pastocalle travel once a month to Quito to meet in Chasquinet's office
and to use the computers there.

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A major change has indeed taken place in their lives.


Hope this illustrates better what I am trying to explain. It is always
difficult to explain in workds and in english :-)
All the best,

Karin






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