[Ilugc] OT: Fwd: Bridging the gap between rural india and wikipedia
- From: suraj@xxxxxxxxx (Suraj Kumar)
- Date: Fri Feb 20 16:25:40 2009
On Tue, Feb 17, 2009 at 6:28 PM, Parthan SR <parth.technofreak@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Wow, hearing something similar to what I have been with (through
my employer) for the past 2 years :) We operate Rural Telcenters,
or Technology Enabled Rural Kiosks, all over Karnataka and few
[snip]
their utility bills. They want a place with such a facility that
they can easily pay their bills in their own villages.
True.
Although the idea of Wiki-enabled Kiosk sounds interesting, we
also need to count the literacy level of the villagers to use such
The NGO worker's main job is to be the collector and editor of
information about that local area. He would be qualified enough to
help the villagers out - one of his key responsibilities will be to
bring awareness through meaningful practical applications (I don't
know what this could be - but one such thing I can imagine is in
combination with some other NGO - like echoupal).
a facility. How will they go and find an information they want? Do
they know to type the keyword to get their information? While
providing a reliable internet connection over rural India still
remains a challenge, the further challenge is maintaining these so
called kiosks. The main problem is high frequency of power outages
and management of resources.
The answer to this is in my original email (sorry if that was long
and made you skip through sections!). The basic idea being, they
merely borrow books from this library like they would borrow from
any library. They don't even have to know a thing about computers -
not even the fact that the 'books' they're reading / editing are
stored on the Internet. Infact, the 'computer' in the library need
not even be 'on' all the time. But this is all only the library's
job.
The NGO worker ensures people get awareness and thinks towards
benefiting his locality. He teaches them and helps them with
information useful to the locality and their life styles. He is not
just a 'librarian'. Of course, this needs smart and dedicated NGO
workers - not just people who can deliver food / materials. But I'm
confident we aren't short of such people.
To mention some similar endeavors, check out Nemmadi project by
GoK and RBCs operated by Comat in Karnataka and by OneRoof in
certain parts of TN.
Thanks for the references. I'll check these out.
-Suraj
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