The background

The telecenter movement has gained substantial momentum during the past five years largely through the leadership of international organizations such as the International Telecommunications Union (ITU), the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the World Bank, UNESCO, the International Development Research Center (IDRC) and the U. S. Agency for International Development. Their commitment is based on the assumption that information and communication technologies have much potential for accelerating community development. Furthermore, they suggest that telecenters could be instrumental in providing universal access to these resources so that individuals might enjoy better health, education, income, and welfare.

The potential is illustrated in a report from Cambodia published in the International Herald Tribune. It tells of the village chief who is quoted as saying: “I don’t really know what the Internet is or how it works, but it is changing our lives.” The story goes on to tell about women who revived the village’s traditional silk-weaving industry.

The scarves are sold through the village’s web site to customers around the world, but the profits are being plowed into a pig farm. The farm has generated new employment, possible spin-off industries and hoped-for profits that will go into a fund to pay for the villagers’ medical care.

Comments at various international conferences on telecenters have suggested that training for telecenter managers has been largely spontaneous – if it existed at all. Yet it is recognized that the sustainability of telecenters depends heavily on the quality of leadership and service provided by the telecenters. Participants in one such conference sponsored by Canada’s IDRC urged a Cornell University team to take leadership in developing training materials. Discussions with both ITU and FAO resulted in this project to create a training manual or handbook for telecenter personnel.

Creating the Handbook

A Handbook for Telecenter Staffs was the result. The Cornell team used a variety of methods to create the Handbook. These included surveying a large number of persons who had been involved in the uses of information and communication technologies (ICT) for development. The team also visited telecenters in North and Latin America, Africa, eastern Europe, Asia, and the Pacific to learn more about the activities and needs of telecenter staffs. The objective of the fieldwork was not only to study telecenter projects in these countries but to compile training materials that were already being used by telecenter managers and could be adapted for the Handbook. Our manual also has benefited from the work done by other organizations and, with their permission, we have included parts of their publications within these covers. Ideas and materials were also provided by an international group of graduate students at Cornell University.

This Handbook: an invitation

Creating a manual for telecenter staffs is a very ambitious endeavor, mainly because telecenter experiences around the world are very diverse and there is no ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach to telecenter development. Therefore, this Handbook is necessarily generic and comprehensive. And, while some may consider these characteristics a drawback, we suggest that the all-encompassing goal of the Handbook is one of its strongest advantages. The Handbook provides a panoramic overview of the wide range of different aspects that may come into play in the planning and daily functioning of a telecenter for community development. As a manual, it stands not only as a self-learning tool and management guide for telecenter staffs, but also as a reference resource to guide a future search for additional educational materials. In this latter sense, the Handbook may also serve as a reference tool for organizations involved in telecenter development, or as a guide for trainers of telecenter staffs.

The Handbook is organized in ten modules. (See the list below.) These modules are complementary, but they can be read or consulted in any order to suit the needs of the reader. Nonetheless, this handbook is necessarily a permanent work in progress. This means that our task in unfinished. This manual is not static: it is an expansive resource, a beginning. In any case, first and foremost, this manual is an invitation. It is an invitation to participate in an ongoing learning experience. This handbook considers telecenters an opportunity for community development through participation and shared learning and that spirit prompts the expectation that you and others will continually reinvent and improve it as a useful practical manual for sustaining the value of telecenters. We hope that the Handbook can help stimulate this learning process.

The greatest benefit will come from people interacting with the handbook: cutting, pasting, updating, and discussing it. We hope that dedicated telecenter people can appropriate this handbook and apply it in their constant search of creative and innovative solutions for community development: this handbook is also a humble invitation to take action.

Acknowledgements

The Handbook is the fruit of a collaborative effort. There are many people who have been involved in one way of another in the different stages of the project during the past two years. Johan Ernberg first came up with the idea of creating a manual for telecenter managers. Ernberg, then working for the ITU, animated us to prepare this handbook during a lunch meeting in Manhattan in December 1999. We are indebted to him for the initial ideas and the enthusiasm to see this project realized.

This project has been carried out with the financial support of the ITU and FAO. We thank these two organizations – especially Guy Girardet and V. M. Calindi of ITU, and Riccardo DelCastello of FAO – for their advice and guidance. They and others pushed us to make sure the Handbook would relate to rural and agriculturral societies. We also acknowledge the continuous support of the Department of Communication at Cornell University. Additionally, a grant by Industry Canada allowed us to study its Community Access Program and learn from the experience of many CAP sites in Eastern Canada.

We would like to thank the highly committed telecenter activists and researchers from all around the world who participated, during the Fall of 1999 and Spring of 2000, in our panel study to identify the most important training topics for a telecenter staff: Venkataraman Balaji, Peter Benjamin, Sylvia Cadena, Steve Cisler, Lew Cramer, Mona Dahms, Karin Delgadillo, Mansour Diouf, Steve Dorsey, Ron Epstein, Johan Ernberg, Anriette Esterhuysen, Glen Farrell, Lauren Fok, Mary Fontaine, Gary Garriot, Guy Girardet, Alfonso Gumucio, Roger Harris, Yuri Herrera-Burstein, Arjan de Jager, Mike Jensen, Charles Malan, Meddie Mayanja, Michel Menou, Paula Middleton, Esme Modisane, Enmanuel Enjenga, Z. M. Nyiira, Katharina Pillay, Ricardo Ramírez, Don Richardson, Scott Robinson, Steve Ronan, George Scharffenberger, Steve Song, Klaus Stoll, and David Wilcox.

We want to acknowledge all the people who kindly helped us in the field, especially the telecenter staffs in South Africa, Hungary, India, Australia, and Canada. Without the help of several outstanding individuals (who became our friends) our work in the field would have been simply impossible. We are highly indebted to Peter Benjamin for his vision and wisdom, and for his help during our research while in South Africa and even after we came back from the field. We thank Gail Short and Trish Barron for being our best guides to discover the telecenter network in Western Australia. The hospitality and assistance of Mátyás Gáspar was essential in making us understand how Hungarian telecenters work. Our colleagues Thamizoli Permal Ermal and Dr. Balasubramanian of the M. S. Swaminathan Research Foundation provided us with invaluable support during our field trips in South India; their insights were crucial in shaping our ideas about community telecenters, and their contributions are reflected in this handbook.

We also want to thank the group of graduate students at Cornell University who participated in our seminar on telecenter training during the Fall of 2000. The contributions of doctoral students Mark Chong, Laura Ieraci and Stefanie Koch were especially useful. Mark Chong elaborated most of module 6; Stefanie Koch contributed modules 3 and 8; and Laura Ieraci covered chapters 9 and 10. We also acknowledge the work of Abigail Pfiester on Canadian telecenters, and her enthusiasm in our discussions at Cornell.

Finally, we would like to acknowledge the staff of a telecenter project in South India, coordinated by the Tamil Nadu University of Veterinary and Animal Sciences and Cornell University, for their suggestions and comments on a previous draft of this handbook.

Royal D. Colle
Raul Roman

Ithaca, New York
October 2002

LIST OF MODULES

Please note that these documents are in Microsoft® Word format.