Regional Conference On Localized ICT Development And

Dissemination Across Asia- PAN Localization Project

12th - 16th January, 2009Novotel Hotel, Vientiane, Laos

Local Language Computing Technology Training Programs across PAN L10n project II

Summary and ConclusionsRajendra Poudel

enrd@wlink.com.np

NEPAL- BackgroundLocation : Southern Asia, between China and India

Area : 147,181 Sq. Km (Land-143, 181 Sq. km., water- 4,000 sq. Km.

Population : 29, 519,114 (July 2008 est.)

Religions: Hindu 80.6%, Buddhist 10.7%, Muslim 4.2%, Kirant 3.6%, Other 0.9%

Language : Nepali 47.8% Maithali 12.1%, Bhojpuri 7.4%, Tharu 5.8% Tamang 5.1%, Newar 3.6%, Magar 3.3%, Awadhi 2.4 %, Other 10%, unspecified 2.5% (Ninety languages fall either Aryan or Tibeto Burman family, Out of them only 5 have scripts)

Literacy : 48.6% (male 62.7%, 37.3%)Unemployment rate : 42%Internet countrycode : .npInternet Users : 337,100

(source: The World Factbook-2007, Publish by CIA, USA)

PAN Localization Project Phase II

VisionThe community people women, farmers, teachers, students and youths use localized computing technology more efficiently in the various fields they are involved to receive social services delivery system. The community groups have enough technical capacity to generate and use locally relevant content to improve their living standard and make their life more enjoyable. Such benefits of technology is accessing by equal participation of gender, marginalized community and ethnic group. The model, the experiences and the techniques and methodologies developed by the project are replicating in other villages of country.

MissionThe project will focus mainly on building the capacity of local community people from 5 different groups to use and deploy the localized computing technology in their daily activities. The program will encourage equal participation of community and organizations accessing the technology and generating locally relevant content and display them in internet in local language.

Background

-PAN Localization Project Phase II has been implemented in 5 sites.- (Major locations are government schools and public tele- centres)- Conducted training in layered approach ToT Layer - Training of Trainer - 5 persons 3LT Layer - Local Level Leadership Training (5X5=25 Persons ) EUT Layer – End user Training (5X5X5= 125 Persons )

(Total- 155 Persons)- Focus is given on leadership handover, skill transformation, digital literacy, and business creation. .- Training methodology and all the training materials are developed by Local Level leader trainer (3LT).- Options has been given to the end-users for the selection of license application or open source application or both. - Youth and students has majority of participation.- Female participations rate is higher - 56% - Local level leader can create website in Drupal application. - End User can upload and access content form the internet.

ToT-5

3LT-5-5

EUT

PAN Localization Phase II- Background

What were our bottom-line

- Ownership of the program should be in local people,- Local organization should assure the matching fund for the sustainability of the training in future. (Acceptance of the project from the local people)

- Local resources (HR/infrastructure) should be capatilzed. - Training material and methodology should be develop with the participation of local HR.- ENRD should only advocate the local people, all the project should be managed and deployed by local people

How it is going one ?Different boundary partners played vital role to complete the training.(Farmers, youth, teachers, students and mothers group)People either young or old all participated in the training actively and contributed to the project to achieve it’s goal.

Mr Amar Bahadur Pun is 62 years old retired Gurkha Army. He actively took training and handover his skill to the Family of other Gurkha Army. He him self develop his teaching methodology and training materials.

Mrs Maya Gurung is 32 years old mother having 3 kids. She had received 5 grade education and after her marriage she could not continue her education. She is keen to learn and study for the better future of her family. She actively took Training and hand over her skill to all the members of mother Group in her village. She developed her training materials by her self

What are outputs?

- 5 centres run training in their village and transfer their skill to the 150 participants (Their is 87 female  and  63 male) - 5 different training material has been developed by 5 centres. (Training manual on Nepali Linux, Training manual on Open Office, Training manual on Windows XP and Training manual on Ms Office) - 2 centres selected Nepali Linux as their Operating system. 3 centres selected Windows XP, for the application 4 centres selected Open office and 1 centre selected MS office. - 5 websites are running and villagers them self are uploading the content in the websites. Educational related material, local level literature (poem/stories etc), advertisement of the village product, local news, and internal tourism related content are increasing in the websites. www.shikha.com.np, www.nangi.com.np, www.jhuwani.com.np, www.tolka.com.npwww.dandagaun.com.np Local government (VDC) decided to allocate budget for ICT education in the government school for every year planning. - Mothers groups are raising the fund for the matching fund for running similar training program in future.

Who are working for it?

Activities in Summary

Activities in Local level Activities in ENRD

6 general meetings in each centers conduct by the village (30 general meetings in all the centers)

7 general meetings has conduced in ENRD office

6 computer training program completed in each centers (total 30 trainings completed in 5 centers)

5 project management trainings (OMG) completed in ENRD office to the office staffs. Sana has visited office and give full day training in OMG for all the ENRD staffs.

Each centers released their own training materials and training methodology. Most of the centers has uploaded in the website

3 meetings has been conducted with Higher government bodies such as Nepal Government High Level Commission for Information and Technology (HLCIT) and Ministry of Education and Sport.

8 meetings conducted with the Local government and Village Development committee to mange the infrastructure for training and sustainability of the training promotion.

3 Major visit program has organized to show the local level initiative to the Higher Government officials and donor agencies

Activities

Lesson learned

1. Documentation from the initial phase was not done2. Training plan was limited only in paper.3. Communication planning was not done properly.4. ENRD Staffs was changed time by time so community people are suffered

1. Programs running by community people is very effective.2. Capitalizing the people’s skill is the way of sustainability.3. Content developed by community is useful for other community themself.4. Students and School is entry strategies for project and Mother groups and Local

government are exit strategies program.5. Local leader should be more empowered (more training is needed for the program

management and training management for the Local leader)

What is ahead ?Where this river will flow? How we will advocate the villagers in future?How we will return the investment that contributed by the community ? How we will capitalize villager’s investment toward the ICT?What will be our exit strategies from the project? (Of course not from Program!)

The biggest challenge- literacy 48.6% and unemployment is 42% How we will fill this gap by our activities?

Thank You

Cases of Local Language Content Development and Dissemination

Cases of Local Language Content Development and Dissemination

Content development approachTop-bottom approach-

Content producing by ENRD and MPP (For example (ICT Training Manual for ToT, and other study materials. Case

study from outside country, motivating articles and case study etc.)

We did need assessment during Baseline survey. We found there are lot of content and we need to only disseminate the content which has already developed by many organization. For example http://www.olenepal.org for education.Bottom –Up approach-

Content producing by community- ICT Training materials by community for the community- Global content of community

- Rural bulletin board- Rural product advertisement - School level education material - Local government announcement- Digital story telling (DST)- Using Durpal for the online management of the Content.

Content feeders- teachers, students, local government, literate youth and villagers local community org etc.

Content dissemination methodology

Content type identification (It is necessary for whom? )For students, for farmers, for women, for teacher or for others?

Content dissemination method- Online (Client –server architecture and Internet)- off line (From CD) – or hard disk- Wallpaper- IPTV- Tele-medicine, Tele-education- IP radio- - VoIP- Hard copy publication (we are doing in PAN II Phase 3.1-3.2)

Some example www.shikha.com.np, www.tolka.com.np, www.nangi.com.np, www.jhuwani.com.npwww.dandagaun.com.np, www.nepalwireless.com.np, www.nepalchannels.net

Recommendations for Local Language Content Development and Dissemination

1- Topic “CONTENT” is sea, so which content does we want to produce? or we want to only collect and store and disseminate. This role need to be define.

2. There are many ways of content dissemination. So we need to decide how we want to disseminate. What technology we want to use to disseminate the content

3. Authorization of the content is very important.

4. Duplication of content development should be decreased. For example D.Net Bangladesh and Nepal can join hand in health related content. 4- If we want to go in large scale then technical and infrastructure support is necessary.

5. Very important Project Management and Training management training should be given to the staffs who are directly working in the filed for content issue. .