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Net Gains With Somos@telecentros

2001-09-19

A two-year-old Latin American and Caribbean co-operative that joins community Internet access centres, or telecentres, across the region stands at about 1,500 members and growing. Members use what organizers call ‘open learning circles’ to improve each telecentre’s ability to learn from others’ experiences and avoid common mistakes.

Karin Delgadillo and Klaus Stoll of Fundacion Chasquinet told an IDRC workshop that the telecentres strengthen local social networks, giving them the potential to influence larger political and social dynamics. Many local telecentres are based on grassroots communities that have few resources, but which have formed in answer to local needs and issues.

The telecentres will help now-marginal sectors of society, such as the economically disadvantaged, to use the Internet to organize and influence wider thinking on the kinds of national policies, regulations and human rights issues that affect them, Delgadillo said.

Chasquinet hopes that within another two years, the network, called somos@telecentros will reinforce each local telecentre’s ability to undertake institutional development, to network, to learn from each others’ research to improve their own skills, and to reach out internationally, said Delgadillo.

Somos, sponsored by PAN Networking and IDRC, began in 1999 as a way to build regional and national communities through the Internet, as part of a virtual community called Telelac. While it has elements of technical support, many of its aims are social and political.

Over the past two years, the Somos project has put together governance templates, directly supported some newly established telecentres, and built up a web-based resource centre for members, containing some 750 documents on different facets of telecentre operation. Somos@telecentros has also begun filling a bank of stories and data about how communities have been able to set up their telecentres, and has assembled a toolkit to help newborn telecentres become financially sustainable.

The overall network will eventually include an upgraded support network – part political, part technical – for local telecentres, with a national help desk for both types of issues. A resource centre will produce kits to help women and people with disabilities go online, and others to help local users put together their own online content. A "virtual research consortium" will study issues facing the telecentres, and an open software network will give them the tools to link up via radio and video, as well as e-mail. Finally, it will act as a forum in which to exchange stories and experiences.

"But also, the national networks are the dynamics that are strengthening the capacity-building of the local networks, in such a way that we learn from each other," Delgadillo said. "We have already learned that we learn from each other, from the failures as well as the successes. Then we have liaison and advocacy with companies, organizations, and governments. We cannot be isolated. We need to develop liaisons in order to be effective as a network within global forums and influence decisions there."

The project has begun to do this. A manifesto written at a conference in Papallacta, Ecuador in 2000, advocating universal Internet access in Latin America and the Caribbean, has garnered 50,000 signatures, and has become a significant political bargaining chip for somos@telecentros.

That meeting was only one of a series of conferences and workshops. National meetings in eight countries – Cuba, Argentina, Ecuador, Peru, Venezuela, Columbia, Mexico and Brazil – have resulted in their national networks joining Somos.

Keane J. Shore is an Ottawa-based writer and editor.

Karin Delgadillo, Fundacion Chasquinet, Avenida La Coruña
1609 y Manuel Iturrey, PO Box: 17-21-180, Quito, Ecuador, América del Sur. Phone/Fax:
(5932) 567-485; Email: karin@chasquinet.org

Klaus Stoll, Fundacion Chasquinet, Avenida La Coruña 1609 y Manuel Iturrey, PO Box: 17-21-180, Quito, Ecuador, América del Sur. Phone/Fax: (5932) 567-485; Email: klaus@chasquinet.org  

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