Telecentres breaking barriers of IT illiteracy

Since its inception, one of the most common problems faced by telecentres & Nanasala (branded telecentres by ICTA of Sri Lanka), island-wide has been the struggle to convince the local communities of the importance of IT and its many uses. The managers and operatives of these units have had to face a constant challenge in attracting users.

According to U.M.G Bimal manager of the Sevanagala telecentre which became operational in the year 2005, though they promised to give out 30 scholarships only 16 students enrolled in the course during the first year. Similarly at the nanasala in Kegalle, though promotions were carried out at four schools only 24 students enrolled for the first batch. “This happens because of lower levels of IT literacy which is a common characteristic in many rural areas of the country. For example, Badulla houses some of the most underdeveloped rural villages in Sri Lanka. When traveling as little as two km from the outskirts of the Badulla town it is apparent that development and modern technology have not reached these outlying villages”, says Amila Kasturiarachchi manager of Badulla telecentre.

However many of these areas are undergoing tremendous changes and these have reflected positively in the levels of IT literacy achieved. Bimal claims that in the sevenagala area alone, the IT literacy levels which had been as low as 2% in the year 2005 has now risen to 15%.

Different Nanasalas and telecentres tackle theses issues in various ways. The telecentre at Badulla which started with very low user popularity used many means of cost-efficient publicity. The centre managed to attract the young community in the area through promoting benefits of internet surfing and allocating time for computer games.

Also a trend noted in Badulla was that the IT courses introduced were not popular initially due to the relative high cost. Having recognized this, Amila introduced basic level IT courses at almost one quarter of the cost of the main course fees. The interest created through these preliminary courses helped draw students to the main courses at later stages.
Another aspect which has drawn users to the Badulla telecentre are the regular seminars conducted at the village information centres by the telecentre staff. Parents have also begun to display a keen enthusiasm and encourage their children to make use of the facilities available for IT education at the telecentres. “Some times school children would refuse to stay after school for various school activities if they have classes at the centre. They are keen not to miss even one lesson”, claims Amila.
Written by Chaturi Dissanayake

Sarvodaya-UK to support Eco-Fusion

The Sarvodaya-UK trustees meeting held in London on 29th March, was very important to Fusion, Sri Lanka. One objective of the meeting was to focus on the Sarvodaya-UK's working strategy. Responding to Fusion's request, Sarvodaya-UK agreed to concentrate on supporting Eco-fusion.

Eco-Fusion is the ecological program of Fusion, which is still at the concept stage. Capitalizing on promising Social Enterprise efforts of Fusion, Eco-Fusion aims to integrate Environmental bottom lines into the Economic and Social goals of Fusion.

Accordingly the 'carbon foot print' and 'responsible handling of hazardous ICT waste' would be the areas of attention. Sarvodaya UK would support Fusion, to materialize this program, by building appropriate UK Institutional partnerships and resources.

Additionally, Sarvodaya-UK would concentrate on continuing its Community Currency pilot program being implemented in Kurunegagla district.

Sarvodaya-UK is a registered charity in United Kingdom, set up by UK friends of Sarvodaya to help and promote Sarvodaya ideals.

Agony of transforming into Social Enterprising

SITU (Sarvodaya IT Unit) is the pioneering telecentre program of Sarvodaya, and the stepping stone of Fusion. Though it had multiple sustainability elements inbuilt from early stages, the organizational priorities (of Sarvodaya) were on social-welfare delivery than revenue generation. Thus, SITU lacked the conducive organizational environment to materialize a cohesive economic program. As a result, the program was struggling to maintain its own telecentre network by early 2006. Since then, the management had taken a serious challenge to convert the unit into a self-sustainable (non-profit) operation.

What were their strategic steps?

• Institutionally, SITU has been re-organized under new program (Fusion) and given its freedom to concentrate on Social Enterprising.
• Management of SITU accepted the challenge, had re-defined their strategic mission, and set up a very systematic revenue generation plan.
• After assessing the overall operation, they have hand picked 10 telecentres (out of 34) as economically feasible ones, and initiated participatory discussions with their telecentre operators on revenue targets.
• Among diverse services they have offered, ICT Courses and IT Services had been selected as main services & products.
• Developed a detail business plan with monthly targets.

At the end, they set up an ambitious revenue target of 10.5mil Rs (10,500$US) to be generated by the end of March, 2008.

What was the progress?

After 9 months of performances (from April – Dec, 2007), SITU has reported 4.1mil Rs (4,100$US) overall revenue. That was just about 40% of their target.

Why only 40%?

Though in conventional terms this could be an acceptable progress as a start up enterprise, Program Managers strive to refine their strategy and approach.Following were the list they identified as the problem list contributed to lesser progress;

• Overall targets were not realistic (though they used their decade long telecentre experiences to set the financial targets, they did not have experience of running the program as an enterprise. Thus did not have past records to figure out their forecasts).
• Could not assess the staff capacity and operational obstacles during planning stage
* Optimal number of staff required at telecentres to carry out set targets
* Entrepreneurial skills of the staff
* Running conditions of the ICT equipment
• Capital shortages (Absence of sufficient cash flow)
* To carry out appropriate equipment replacements
* To carry out promotional campaigns
• Internal coordination problems
* The administration system was designed (over the years) for welfare delivery. Thus priorities of different departments were not aligned with the time-driven demands of business operation.

(The above post extracted from http://www.sustainabilityfirst.org/ )

Fusion - ends tenure as GKP- Regional Cordinator for South Asia

Fusion has successfully concluded another responsibility as the Regional Coordinator of GKP- South Asia. GKP (Global Knowledge Partnership http://www.globalknowledge.org/) is the biggest ICT4d and K4D alliance in the world. Regional Coordinator is elected for 2 year terms, by the regional membership, to coordinate the overall South Asia region.

Having 34 members comprising of Governments, Civil Society and Corporate sector organizations, South Asia region holds the biggest (24%) membership of GKP. During two year tenure (2006 May - 2008 March), Fusion had carried out multiple programs to maintain the dynamism of the whole region.

Among the highlights;

• Fusion managed to draw additional donor funding (UNDP) to the SA region


• 6 multi-stakeholder partnership projects initiated and implemented directly benefiting 14 member organizations


• 3 Regional meetings conducted on regular basis representing multiple countries (Sri Lanka, India, Bangladesh), and facilitated participatory planing process


• Generated regional dynamism, mobilizing diverse partners across diverse sectors seeking new multi-stakeholder engagements (eg ICTA - govt of Sri Lanka sponsoring GK3 South Asia pavilion, Naturesoft - corporate sector partnering with SEWA of India, D.Net of Bangladesh publishing a book on multi country case studies).

By action Sarvodaya-Fusion had demonstrated passion, dedication, impartiality and ability to generate results for the benefit of the wider regional membership.

"We appreciate the successful tenure of Sarvodaya-Fusion!" - High Level Commission for Information Technology (HLCIT), Government of Nepal. Joined together with appreications were, FIT of Nepal, One World South Asia (OWSA) and Naturesoft, India; D.Net & BNNRC, Bangladesh, KADO of Pakistan, YATV Sri Lanka etc.

Nevertheless, two members acknowledged that they expected more.

In the final closing up mail circular to the region Fusion stated; "we tried our best to deliver most out of quite thin resources available for the region. Nevertheless our sincere apologies if we could not satisfy all".

Though Fusion has been nominated to contest for a another term as Regional Cordinator, organization decided not to contest, leaving the door open for other regional members to take the opportunity.

Nevertheless, Fusion intends to accept the nominations for GKP-Executive Committee, to deliver the services at a different capacity.

Environment, telecentres and holistic Sustainability

Environment conservation, climate change are not the familiar words in the vocabulary of 200 telecentre operators working closely with 'telecentre family' project of Fusion. As a strategic 'first step' to walk together towards a sustainable future, telecentre family had introduced one full day session on Environmental Sustainability into its ongoing 'ICan' workshop series.

‘look at the blue sky before you switch on the computer, enjoy the freshness of air before your mind get polluted by unpleasant news from the world. You may hear chirpy bird calls or noisy crow or koel sounds. What ever the natural sound you hear, think that they are your brothers and sisters.’ - Kanchana Weerakoon, President of ECO-V.

The day begins with a specially designed 'environment meditation' which invites all the telecentre operators to sit under trees in the open environment and start a journey to connect with the 'inner self' . Then gradually builds up with slide presentations and more focused topics about environment, climate change, toxic matter dispersion etc. which opens the minds of telecentre operator into an entirely new perspective beyond ICT, yet connected to their own telecentre eco-system.

' Telecentre operators are the live wire that connects the community with ICT. They must give the ICT products to the community and also earn a living by that. Hard as it seems, but pretty clear that all we need is balance…..Economic value Vs community service….technology Vs environment…can you see the bigger picture?' - those are the words of Isura Silva, Project Manager of telecentre family project, who had initiated discussions with Eco-V to design the program.

ECO-V (Eco friendly volunteers) - is a dedicated environment NGO, who had won international awards for their dedicated environment activism in Sri Lanka. Fusion and ECO-V work as collaborating partner institutions to design and deliver 'ICT for environment programs'.

This will build up initial platform to launch much broader 'Eco-telecentre' program of Fusion, which is envisaged to bring about holistic sustainability aspect into the overall telecentre eco-system.

(For more information about 'Eco-telecentre' concept please communicate to Harsha at smilingharsha@gmail.com).

Unique collaboration between Sarvodaya and MSSRF at SRTAC

Building inner spiritual resilience is the primary coping mechanism to external disasters – Dr A T Ariyaratne, Founder – President, Sarvodaya.

SRTAC – Strengthening Resilience in Tsunami Affected Communities is a uniquely interesting project due to multiple reasons. Two world renowned Civil Society organizations; Sarvodaya of Sri Lanka and MSSRF (MS Swaminathan Research Foundation) of India, share their age long expertise for the benefit of Tsunami affected coastal communities, in this project. The beneficiary communities are in two countries India and Sri Lanka, yet both affected by same disaster – tsunami, in 2006.

In Sri Lanka, Sarvodaya implements the project in 12 Muslim, Tamil and Sinhala communities representing 4 districts (Hambantota, Kalmunei, Matara and Galle), with the close collaboration of another organization - Practical Action. Department of Forestry serves the project as a technical advisor.

Another unique feature of the project is its effort to combine environment conservation together with ICT4D. Mangrove and Non-mangrove bio-shields are given high attention in the project by mobilizing communities to rehabilitate, establish and sustain them as a protecting shield against Tsunami disasters. VICs and Telecentres are established and utilized as ICT windows to document, update and share the knowledge gained in such disaster mitigation engagements.

Fusion partners with SRTAC in selected aspects of the project concentrating onVIC and Telecentres. Capacity building of VIC and Telecentre operators, management and sustainability of their operations are given special attention. TCF of Fusion, recently carried out an ICAN workshop specially designed for this purpose as the entry point into the partnership. Fusion also plans to introduce economic sustainability models to the VIC and telecentre managers, considering their long term sustenance.

SRTAC is funded by IDRC and CIDA.

3rd Board meeting of Fusion & Progress Indicators

Fusion had a combined meeting of the Senior Advisers and Board members on 8th Feb, 2008 at its office in Kotte. Progress made by Fusion during last 9 months period (April - Dec, 2007) had been reviewed.

Report highlights:

Impact on Grassroots communities -

• over 111,600 poor people had been educated on ICTs and prepared for the information age.
• 24,480 people accessed ICT facilities through Sarvodaya telecentres alone.
• 87,120 villagers (rural people) had been served by VIC (village information centres)
• 258 Rural youth received ICT skills development

Impact on Telecentres (including Nanasala) -

• Telecentre operator Provincial alliances were set up in 8 provinces (out of 9 in Sri Lanka).
• 172 telecentre operators (majority Nanasala) given skill development, social enterprise guidance and operational assistance.

Emerging Social Enterprise -

Fusion operates as a non-profit making Social enterprise. Thus, during the reporting period, it has generated substantial revenues providing ICT courses and other IT services through telecentres. Yet, expecting an overall loss during the budget period.

Social Return on Investment -

Over the reporting period - Fusion reports 1,200,000Rs of Economic Saving to the Communities, just from the ICT courses offered through telecentre network. (Fusion offers ICT courses at a nominal fee, in which the prices are set above the break even points but below the market prices, thus community recieving a net economic gain in addition to the educational gains).