Developing and sustaining a not-for-profit telecentre

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Sandra Nassali on October 12, 2009 at 5:07am

Hello Robert, according to the http://portal.unesco.org/en/ev.php-URL_ID=25893&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC..." target="_blank">Telecentre Cookbook, To ensure that the Telecentre is sustainable, you must make sure that it starts off correctly. Because it is a complex task to set up a Telecentre, the following explains the basic steps to be followed so that the Telecentre will be of greatest benefit to the community.
• First set up a core group of people who will be responsible for guiding the continuous
development of the Telecentre.
• Then a public meeting must be held to assess the community’s information and
communication needs. This will help to define the type of Telecentre and services that
will be established.
• Next, premises must be found and a business plan must be developed.
• Once this has been done, the funds will have to be raised.
• Finally, when the schedule has been finalised, cooking can begin!
The minimum requirements for setting up a Telecentre are:
• Customers/users
• Start-up finance
• A business plan
• Suitable premises
• Electricity and telephone connections
• Capacity to meet the legal requirements
• Tools (hardware and software) and furniture
• A Co-coordinator/Manager and a Steering Committee (or governing body).
These help in sustaining the telecentre and guide on which services to provide.

▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Robert Ooko on October 12, 2009 at 6:51am

Hi Sandra, thanks for the response.Would you or anybody in the community have practical experience on such a venture?

▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Alan Foo on October 12, 2009 at 10:41am

For a telecenter to be sustainable of course there must be income. ... ie. cash. However poor a community is , there surely are some who can afford to pay for the services. Otherwise you surely can forget about sustainability for a telecenter.

A suggestion would be is to provide a tutorial service to educate the local community for a small fee.

To enable this, you would need to have contents. Contents you can buy or get it free from the Internet or develop it yourself or with partners/teachers etc.

We are one of those who provide such possibilities for telecenters... create your own contents easily as well as having ready contents from our site.

If you are interested perhaps you can download our tool and test it out.
http://www.paperlesshomework.com/download/agewin/Agebasic.zip

We are now piloting it in our Malaysian telecenters and more contents would be developed. The subjects we are currently developing are English and Mathematics. Other subjects can be developed too.

Take a long at the tools and a few samples available in there.

If you find it feasible , do contact me again for further development on how to provide extra revenue for your telecenter and that extra revenue can come from areas far from your telecenter.

Regards
Alan
www.paperlesshomework.com

▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Joyce Edward on October 19, 2009 at 5:15am

Thank you Alan you seem to have practical solution to this question. Please be informed that this is not a challenge to Robert only but to other members too. So i would suggest that you just advice on what yo know even b4 Robert requests for the same as it will help others too.
Regards
Joy

▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Francis Mwathi on October 13, 2009 at 3:08am

Hi Robert,

Sustainability to Telecentres is adaptability ‐ the ability of a Telecentre and the individuals connected to it both to generate additional revenue successfully and to pull off the difficult task of doing more with less. Also leadership of both the staff and board is key. Improving management systems to ensure greater cost efficiency and effectiveness could as well be important.

Sustainable organizations including Telecentres exhibit leadership that is visionary, strategic, inclusive, decisive, inspirational, motivational and accountable

Having a mission and vision statement or even going through the process of developing one isn’t enough. In fact, to be effective, the Telecentre vision and mission statement must be communicated successfully by staff and board leaders to a Telecentre’s internal and external stakeholders, constituents, and donors

Sustainable telecentre leadership means sharing equally in the rewards of successful efforts and in the negative consequences of less successful ones, including the often avoided task of letting go of consistently poor performers, whether paid or volunteer

Finally, successful telecentre leaders must make decisions that stakeholders agree are “cost‐effective.” In other words, for leadership to produce results, decisions must be based on two key factors:
1)the cost of services on a per person basis
2)and measures of effectiveness which define success through outcomes and/or behavioral changes for those being served (targeted).

▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Voices of Africa for Sustainable Development on October 13, 2009 at 4:02am

Please contact me at crystal@voicesofafrica.org.

Asante sana.

▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by gener on October 13, 2009 at 4:27am

Hi Robert, this is one of the most challenging task of the CeC Manager on how to make the center sustainable in the midst of the poverty in the community. basically you have to create programs that would lead to the development of the community through ICT. maybe you could find a product that you could offer to the world that you can sell on line. or encourage people to start blogging so that they could earn additional income through advertising. or you can actually use your cec as an outsourcing center that could do the job of a back end office like financial recording ect.

encouraging them to learn about ict is the first process after they have learned they must find out for themselves on how to use it for them to grow economically.

▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by gener on October 13, 2009 at 4:28am

or you could empower them by the formation of digital cooperatives in which they would be part owner of the center. you could tie up with one of your software and hardware vendors for them to become community based resellers.

▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Md. Khairuzzaman on October 13, 2009 at 4:44am

To run the telecenter and to sustain it, financing for the operational cost is an issue. But if community response positively then it is not a matter. By following you can easily earn revenue to operate the telecenter and repay the loan.
1. By adding some ancillary services (like computer compose and print, Digital photography, internet browsing etc.) beside information services.
2. Group formation among the local elites and subscription from them.
3. Build up local information data base and provide it to various national and international research agencies against service charge.

▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Kurtis Unger on October 13, 2009 at 4:57am

Hello Robert,
I am doing the exact same thing in Mugumu, Tanzania (just south from you!) and facing the same challenges. Many people here are very, very poor and are unable to afford our services. But they also do not NEED our services. Our center generates a little income to support a clinic for people with HIV/AIDS. Others gave some valuable high level advice but I will give some more practical advice.

- pricing for everyone: I think you will find that unfortunately you will not be able to help the very poorest people but usually they will also not need your services. If you would like to just promote ICT to people who cannot afford it I suggest printing a page from Wikipedia Swahili or local news every day or week and posting it outside for everyone to read and learn from. People can even give suggestions about what they want to read about next week.
The hardest part was to predict how many people would come to use internet. Of course when we surveyed the town everyone says they want to use the internet but now that we have opened and charge for 1000TSH per half hour we have very few customers. Much of our money comes from other services. For example, I am surprised at how many computers people bring in for servicing every month. I did not think people had such new computers like this in Mugumu.
Your biggest cost will be staff salaries so try to keep your staff to a minimum. We have one staff plus me and I working for the clinic so don't take money from the cafe.

- software: I do not use any illegal software at our cafe, just because of virus issues, but you will have to decide
If you have a very small centre (3 client computers + host) you can download a trial version of TrueCafe and use it to monitor the client computers. (In Mugumu we rarely have more than 2 clients at a time so it works well) It is very nice for tracking time, printing, and usage.
If you have older computers (PII) I would strongly suggest using Puppy Linux. It is VERY fast even on old computers and is great if your computers are just being used for internet access. (It also has a basic word processor and spreadsheet tool as well.) But since it is linux you will not be able to use TrueCafe.

- other services:
We provide printing services which helps a lot.
We sell free software that we download (picture editing, office suites, music players, video editors, anti-virus, etc) we charge per MB.
We also provide basic 1 week computer courses. Since you are in Kenya you can go to www.jamani.nl and download their courses in Swahili - I have found them to be very useful!
Finally we also provide computer repair services. We use Ultimate Boot CD for Windows to clean virus's, restore drivers, recover files etc. (You have to be technical to use it.) Since we do not use or install illegal software this means that our clients are the ones with good new computers and can pay proper fees for our services. It also means that we don't waste our time trying to install Windows XP, finding drivers, etc on very old machines which is what many people want but also can't afford to pay very much.

Only after 3 months of being open do enough people know about our cafe so that we are beginning to cover our costs properly.

Good luck!

Karibu Mugumu,
Kurtis

▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by okello cosmas on October 13, 2009 at 5:06am

Robert it's not a simple task whatsoever you feel like putting in place, little did you know it must by within your means as you capability, many people hope for that, they feel shut down due to maintainance and inaccessibility of trainees or the the viability of the business, here we look at community level as regards the training despite the keys of development of ICT and the challenges.

My dear, the Issues of ICT and loan is like conflict;the state of mind and the challenge is how to manage it, not disabusing you of the idea but and a practical man with experience i know what it means. Most people would want to rally behind you and with comparative analysis underway and the secret is the explaination. i think as u look and the viability of the business, we can come in to guide and assist where necessary, being a friend.

Probably, look at my personal website and try to view the pages; are pictures of computer training centre, pictures of my students in lecture room, doing computer training, you would learn much, my website is http://www.okello.cosmas2.htmlplanet.com.

Best regards,

Mr. okello cosmas
IT Adminstrator ASDI computers
+256774015484

▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Dean Mulozi on October 13, 2009 at 5:13am

Hi Robert,
This one of the main challenges facing telecenters in Africa. We did almost a similar project in a deep rural distrct of Zambia. It was not a telecenter per se but a rural network infrastructure on share mobile communications with a view to establish telecenters in a rural district.
The main issues are if the government undertook a needs anaylysis to determine among others type of services that community may requre and whether they will be able to afford the services and at what cost.
Similarly the needs assessment we undertook in Zambia gave us a clear understanding of the community and their demands. The project is to establish a nework infrastructure that will pave way for the development of telecenters cause the needs and services of the community have been known. This helped us even to prepare a business plan inculding the cash flow.

In your case, it may be a good idea to start supporting the telecenter on grant basis up untill local communtities are aware of the value and importance of using the services.

Poverty may not be the excuse because through existence of a telecenter services, the poor people in that area will be aware of their own destiny and start working hard to earn money.

Good luck in your project Robert

Dean

▶ Reply to This

• ‹ Previous
• 1
• 2
• 3
• Next ›
• Page