Notes from Asian Telecentre Forum 2009 / eAsia 2009 held in the BMICH, Colombo, Sri Lanka, on December 2-4th, 2009. More notes on this event: easia2009.
Case studies of innovative applications and practitioners of the Global Telecentre Movement
Chairs: Mahmud Hassan, Bangladesh Telecentre Network
Telecentres through Community Based Organizations (CBOs)
Raman V. Machiraju, Elister IT Solutions India
In financing services, community based organizations can help bridge the different perspectives that banks and especific customers have. Thus, telecentres can act as business facilitators to financial institutions, by adding in the human factor.
Koslanda Nenasala: Challenges and achievements
Sri Kanth
Hill country disabled group: many disabled people in rural areas cannot even get out from their own homes. Give them a laptop and proper training and they can reach out. Many telecentres provide these skills to disabled people.
SriLankaJobs.net
M.A. Pemalatha & Brimal Prasad
is run from a srilankan Nenasala and offers job vacancies in both public and private sectors, including a job seekers database.
One of the major goals is to bring the gap between rural and urban societies. In this sense, both native and international languages are used for the convenience of all the communities.
The project had seed funding from ICTA Sri Lanka, got the e-Swabimani award 2009, and was selected by ICTA for his project replication programme.
Applications have increased from 49 to 619 from January 2009 to November 2009, and it’s having is major impact in rural areas.
So far, CVs have to be uploaded by the managers of the nanosalas in the project (now 5 of them, after the replication programme). This is one of the reasons nanosalas are so necessary for the project, but also a barrier for quickly scaling up and covering the 23 districts of the island.
The implementation of Rural M/SMEs Services using ICT: Egypt and Bangladesh
Rehab Yehia, ICT Trust Fund
Quick win project:
- Short time frame
- Specific objective
- Limited scope
- Quick effects
- Built on previous experience
- Using existing resources
- Pilot project used as a prototype
Learning toolkits are created to teach SMEs in e-marketing, accounting and soft skills. These toolkits (normally in CDs) are distributed to 17 telecentrers in Egypt aiming to reach 1,200 M/SMEs, plus a web portal: Ayadina.net, now considered one of the top-five portals in Egypt for SMEs. The project also includes 4 training rounds with 50 trainers.
After having followed the e-marketing module, many SMEs have created their own websites where they offer they goods.
In Bangladesh the project is implemented in partnership with 30 telecentres and the project is similar to the Egyptian case, diferring only on the type of e-services provided.
