The ACT!ivate  project

A project to build the
Alliance of Caribbean Telecentres (ACT!)

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FACT SHEET

1        What is this project about?
2        What is the Alliance of Caribbean Telecentres (ACT!) ? Where does it come from?
3        The ACT! start-up project:  ACT!ivate (designed in 2007).
4        Add-ons to the original project (in 2008)
5        Additional budget needs.
6        What will it achieved in the next 17 months (Sept. 08-Dec 09)
7        Local, regional and global partnerships
8        Chronogram of implementation
9        Reference glossary.
10      Contact information:

A project implemented by
Fundación Taigüey
and the CarISnet consortium partners

This project is undertaken with the support of telecentre.org program a joint-venture of the International Development Research Centre (Canada),  the Swiss Development Corporation and the Microsoft Corporation.

 

The ACT!ivate  project FACT SHEET

What is this project about?

The ACT!ivate project objective is to establish and initially maintain the core mechanisms of the Alliance of Caribbean Telecentres (ACT!) that is defined as a regional framework for sharing and collaboration among Caribbean telecentres

What is the Alliance of Caribbean Telecentres (ACT!)? Where does it come from?

The Alliance of Caribbean Telecentres (ACT!) concept comes from the process that followed the First Caribbean Telecentres workshop, held in Dominican Republic in July 2006.

During that workshop, some 70 telecentre practitioners and related stakeholders from 15 Caribbean countries, defined the main challenges facing community telecentres projects, and explored what could be done together as described in the Workshop Outputs Summary document

A post-workshop task force defined the Alliance of Caribbean Telecentres (ACT!) as follows: “The Alliance of Caribbean Telecentres (ACT!) has the objective to enable and promote sharing and collaboration among Caribbean telecentres, to strengthen the impact of telecentres initiatives in the communities.

This includes the following areas:

  • Facilitating knowledge sharing and information exchange
  • Facilitating the development of collaborative projects
  • Facilitating technical peer to peer support and/or access to external technical support to telecentres of the region
  • promoting the digital democracy/inclusion and the right to information and to inform
  • promoting community empowerment and transformation capacity into the rural and urban marginal communities”

See the first ACT! Proposal Document online:

The document was shared with all workshop participants, and feedback comments were incorporated into the final version.

The ACT! start-up project:  ACT!ivate (designed in 2007)

After Dec 2006, as designated by the task force, Fundación Taigüey with the support of its CarISnet consortium partners developed an ACT!ivate project proposal that included all the actions necessary to set up the ACT!.

The project purpose of ACT!ivate project is to establish and initially maintain the core mechanisms of the Alliance of Caribbean Telecentres (ACT!) that is defined as a regional framework for sharing and collaboration among Caribbean telecentres

And the expected results were that after 2 years:

      1. ACT! is a vibrant, autonomous, self-managed, sustainable community of Caribbean telecentre stakeholders.
      2. Members use the virtual space and face to face events to network, share information (general and thematic), learn, access resources, services and tools, collaborate in regional projects, etc..
      3. It uses a multilingual online platform that supports a help desk, services channelling, and multiple sections/discussion channels, and databases (resource sections).
      4. A team of alliance members animates thematic discussions, develops together new services and tools, and coordinates regional collaborative projects
      5. Telecentre managers and promoters have developed capacities (via peer to peer learning, training workshops, access to services and resources, etc.) that allows them to strengthen their telecentre operations;
      6. Collaborative regional projects that benefit the alliance, have been developed by members;
      7. Four capacity building events have been implemented.

See ACT!ivate project:

The full project estimated budget is of US$ 496,000. But this project proposal was submitted to telecentre.org in Oct. 2007 requesting US$180,000 to be used over 2 years. The project was finally approved in June 2008 after several iterations/changes with a budget of US$ 150,000 for implementation within a 17 months period.

UPDATE: in July 2009, in common agreement the donation amount was reduced to 82,000 due to impossibility of extending the project and to deliver all results in the original time frame.

 

Add-ons to the original project (in 2008)

The original ACT!ivate project design (end of 2006) was mainly geared towards building the community, networking, p2p support, participative implementation, etc.

Two years later, the centre of gravity of the project has shifted towards the provision of telecentre support services and telecentre managers’ capacity building, taking advantage of sector advances and experiences.

The original design has now been complemented with other elements such as:

  • A formal mechanism of telecentre managers/operators training. (Caribbean Telecentre Academy)
  •   A multilingual online helpdesk or online support services, coupled with a Knowledge Base (see definitions below)

Both elements will be implemented using the knowledge, experience and interconnecting tools available within the telecentre.org community partners.

This does not mean that the community building process has been abandoned or reduced, but that the strategy will focus a bit more on answering quickly the need for concrete support services, and this will strengthen the community building process.

Another important element is the CarISnet 2 project, that is currently being implemented by the same consortium of partners and for which important synergies can be created.  The design of the CIVIC (Caribbean ICT stakeholders Virtual community) web 2.0. platform, its tools (auto-translation, platform tools etc) and concepts (participation, channels) will be reproduced at the telecentre networking level (as the community telecentre channel of CIVIC), with same patterns, but on another scale.

 

Additional budget needs

The following components need additional funding:

    • The annual ACT! events
    • On site training workshops
    • A second channel managers workshop
    • Advocacy and policy activities
    • Certification (trainers)
    • Channelling services and contents
    • Group negotiation/bargaining/brokering
    • Managers/operators exchanges and site visits
    • Jump team (members with expertise, close to provide onsite support) field support.

What will it achieved in the next 17 months (Oct. 08-Dec 09)

The components that are prioritised with the available budget are:

  • Create and strengthen the ACT virtual community (chart defined and approved by end of Nov 2008)
  • Set up and maintain the ACT online networking platform i.e. facilitate and articulate several  levels of  exchange  and multilingual p2p support, training volunteer channel managers (Beta launch of platform by end of December 2008, Training of channel managers by February 2009), meanwhile using simple mailing list with automatic translations.
  • Develop the online support centre (Caribbean telecentre support hotline / help desk – connect to similar services worldwide) (Beta launch January 2009)
  • Provide operators / managers training services (adapting, relaying existing curriculum’s for Caribbean telecentres)   (starting April May 09)
  • Conduct some research (telecentre database, needs and existing) (permanent)
  • Set up and organize uploading resource centre (library and knowledge base KB) (after Jan 09)

 

Local, regional and global partnerships

For the project implementation Fundación Taigüey is partnering with the CarISneT consortium composed of Jamaica Sustainable Development Network – JSDN (Jamaica), DevNet (Guyana) and the Association Haïtienne pour le développement des TICs -AHTIC (Haïti) (see www.CarISneT.org)

During the next weeks, national and regional initiatives related to telecentres/community access centres will be contacted and will be devised a process to form partnerships. These include Latin American network Somos@telecentros, national telecentre networks and initiatives as the Jamaica Telecentre Network, Dominican Republic government CCI and CTC programs, Haiti’s/UNDP PIC program, etc.

Regional Caribbean level initiatives will be approached, as the UNESCO (CMC program), UNDP CORICs program (OECS), Commonwealth of Learning (COL), Trust of the Americas POETA program, Caribbean Development Bank, the Regional ICT steering Committee managed from Caricom etc..

At the global level, contacts and partnership are being established with the telecentre.org at large community.

For the capacity building, we are integrating the process of building the global Telecenter.org academy that is establishing the mechanism for delivering certified training to managers and operators. This global reference centre for curriculum and learning platforms is being developed with partners form Chile, India, Philippines, Colombia, Egypt, Sudan, Mozambique, Brazil, Peru, Spain, Romania, Russia, Uganda,  etc.

For the helpdesk we already have a partnership agreement with CEPES (Peru) and we will seek Ugabytes partnership for the English set up.

Chronogram of implementation 

Month 1 = October 2008 / month 5= February 2009 / 17 = February 2010

Activity / Month

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

16

17

ACT 1.       Project Implementation coordination, administration, partner mgmt.

                                  

ACT 2.       Collegiate support for coordination (consortium members)

                                  

ACT 3.       Set up the ACT portal including Support centre interface

                                 

ACT 4.       Host Maintain, and up grade system – hosting

                                 

ACT 5.       ACT! chart + promote membership selection of  channel managers CM

                                  

ACT 6.       workshop for CM

                                 

ACT 7.       CM support / management tools for channel managers committee

                                  

ACT 8.       Moderation of main mailing list and channels

                                  

ACT 9.       Web content uploading and management, support centre management, approval of resources,

                                 

ACT 10.    Moderation / thematic channels

                                  

ACT 11.    Survey and research (list of TC and initiatives and contacts)

                                  

ACT 12.    Design of the data base structure, editorial policy, and content acquisition,

                                 

ACT 13.    Adapt and prepare offer of  training packaged for managers and operators

                                 

ACT 14.    Test the training  for managers and operators

                                  

ACT 15.    Promote and sell services (training)

                                 

ACT 16.    project development (technical support)

                                  

ACT 17.    Phase 1 Small Collaborative Project implementation:

                                  

ACT 18.    Phase 2: bigger collaborative project

                                  

ACT 19.    Annual event, with workshops, tracks, etc.

                                  

ACT 20.    Project Monitoring and evaluation

                                  

ACT 21.    Documentation lessons learned of the process

                                  

Reference glossary

  • Telecentres not for profit ICT/Internet public access points, (does not exclude multimedia centres or community radio that offer public access to ICTs)
  • Channels  are dedicated online spaces, to support networking, knowledge sharing and collaboration in a particular area or theme which can be sectoral, thematic, geographic
  • Channels are populated with ACT members (members of the whole ACT community) and from each particular channel community
  • Channels have: blogs, forums (both usable through web or email), news articles, channel library, channel agenda, channel classifieds
  • The ACT! platform  will have an online support centre were members can ask questions
  • It will have an resource centre, that includes a library: browsed by categories / taxonomy
  • and the FAQ/KB   Built by systematizing answers forums, support centre questions, training etc,.
  • It will have :
    • members sections: (list of individual members and a list of organizations)
    • Agenda (global channel agenda)
    • Classified section (global channel agenda)
  • ROLES (can be same person)
    • Program or initiative manager: support several telecentres  deployment
    • TC Manager: in charge of managing the telecentre locally, and/or strategic planning
    • TC Operator: serves the users, assign the machines, helps the users
    • TC trainers : train end users in using ICTs in the telecentres

Contact information:

Project coordinator:  Yacine Khelladi
email: yacine<at>taiguey.org. / yacine<at>yacine.net
Telf: +1809 8858443
Web: www.taiguey.org/activate
Fundación Taigüey, Apartado Postal 106. 81000
BarahonaCalle Duarte 35, La Ciénaga, Municipio la Ciénega Provincia Barahona
Republica Dominicana, Dominican Republic