Travel
to schools, both urban and rural, from the stark brick buildings of
Sikhululekile High to the plush lawns of St Albans. Meet Yvonne Makhafola
and teachers like her, many of whom had never touched a keyboard before
joining SchoolNet. See the eager young faces of township learners, for whom
ICTs beckon excitingly.
Hear how the shadow
of the digital divide looms stark over schools in Africa! The average
school In the USA has 1 computer for every 6 learners. By contrast South
Africa had an average of 1 computer for every 164 learners by 2000. The
situation just across the border in Mozambique is dramatically worse with a
national average of 1 computer for every 122 500 learners. And because of
high cost of internet connectivity, a large portion of school budgets go to
paying for access alone.
Observe how
SchoolNet has faced these challenges as they have brought schools, teachers,
learners into the information age. Through their share of mistakes and
failures, they have learnt many important lessons.
In the end, perhaps
more questions than answers remain. How best should ICTs be used as an
enabling device in schools in a sustainable way, in the context of scarce
resources, rising poverty, HIV / AIDS, and proliferating social crises?
Still, one of the key lessons is the vision that ICTs can change the lives
of our children for the better.
For more
information:
http://www.school.za and
http://www.schoolnetafrica.net
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Follow us to the dry
and remote far north, to the dusty roads and rolling hills around
Mokwakwaila telecentre in Limpopo Province. Meet Peter and Elizabeth Lebepe,
whose vision, determination and hope have built a telecentre in a poor rural
community without telephones and only recently electrified. Listen to their
experience and hear their plans for the future.
Travel from there to
Alexsan Kopano Multi-purpose Community Centre, in the brash and boisterous
township of Alexandra with its matchbox houses, ramshackle shanties,
pot-holed streets, piles of garbage, crowds of people with lively faces.
These two places
span the range of telecentres in South Africa, from those driven by
individual entrepreneurship to those built on a more community-owned model.
Through them, we look at some of the lessons that have learned, examining
what factors have allowed less than half to flourish and become sustainable,
with the rest either collapsing or reduced to eking out subsistence and
survival.
We ask what is
needed for telecentres and other community ICT projects to be successful and
appropriate development interventions. How can they ensure they meet real
local needs and are well managed? How can sufficient technical backing and
a supportive adaptive network be ensured? Do telecentres deserve our
cautious optimism? Are learning, support and adaptation indeed the keys?
For more
information:
http://www.communitysa.org.za
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Take a winding,
pot-holed track to the remote community of Lubisi, deep in the rural heart
of the Eastern Cape. Meet Yvonne Mantashe, Manager of the Multi-Purpose
Community Centre - and now custodian of its two surviving PCs.
This is a community
of far horizons, long distances and small dusty villages. Without
electricity and with only one faulty telephone line, unemployment,
illiteracy and poverty are widespread.
Yet, seven years
later, despite enormous challenges - including political infighting and a
robbery - several community-driven projects have begun to bring hope. At
the request of the Lubisi Dam Development Forum, and with the support of the
CSIR and the IDRC, an ICT project was included within an integrated rural
development programme. Some of its results include the computer training
offered by Yvonne Mantashe, and the Lubisi Legends Sewing Group, whose web
site offers the possibility of a global marketplace for the crafts produced
by the strong fingers of rural women.
Despite both
challenges and setbacks, this is a community that believes strongly in the
possibilities of the future benefits of the information age. They have seen
that ICTs can support rural communities - provided the social and
political dynamics are understood and managed.
For more
information:
http://www.cda.co.za/lubisi/index.html
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Take a trip to
scenic Cape Town. But go off the travelled tourist track to the crowded
townships sprawled far beneath majestic Table Mountain and its legendary
table cloth. Get away from those famous golden beaches to the streets and
houses of the windy Cape Flats. See a kaleidoscope of faces and cultures, a
melange of tastes, smells and colours that make up an alternative tourism
route - sonke, alles, together!
Meet Dale Isaacs,
chair of the Cape Sonke Route, who started her business with R 30, a sick
husband and two kids! Travel from the colourful boKaap, through crowded
Langa and Mitchells Plain, to distant Khayelitsha.
Stop off to talk to
Thandiwe, owner of Ma Neo’s Bed & Breakfast. Hear the woody pulse of the
marimbas throb through Lelapa Restaurant. See the bright crafts and canny
artefacts of Khayelitsha Craft Market.
Hear how the support
of the IDRC and the University of the Western Cape helped bring together a
community around these alternative tourist attractions. Share their vision
of the potential of ICTs to build the profile of a very different kind of
tourism and cement the unity of its participants. Hear too the challenges
and difficulties they have faced, but nonetheless their optimism for the
future.
With beginnings as small as
R 30, but dreams as big as the future, the strength of their shared vision
is what gives hope to the role of ICTs in enabling the entrepreneurship of
this community - sonke, alles, together.
For more
information:
http://www.africandream.org/ZAWCCTTownship01/ZAWCCTTownship01initial.asp?Route_ID=21
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TOP
Join us in a journey
through two very different projects. Many miles may separate the online
gender activists of Women’sNet from the rural community of the Greater
Edendale Environmental Network (GREEN), crowded along the eroded banks of
the Msundusi River.
But both are
networking projects. Both use ICTS to link groups of people (women and
rural communities) with each other and with the information they need. Both
aim to promote social change
Meet Natasha Primo
and Lebo Marishane in the Women’sNet offices in bright, blaring
Johannesburg. Hear how exposure to ICTs has changed the lives of young
black women, and is beginning to impact the race and gender attitudes in
South Africa. Learn about the challenges these young women have faced,
building web sites, using e-mail and the Internet to strengthen networks and
form alliances, to exchange information and empower a community of women.
From there travel
down to the catchment area of the Msundusi River in rural kwaZulu-Natal,
home to half a million people who live along its eroded banks where the
muddy water swirls. Hear how the dramatic floods of Christmas 1995 brought
together a community of people to reverse the degradation of river banks and
flood plains. Meet project co-ordinator Khulekhani Ndawonde. See how
training in the use of ICT has enabled people to use information and
networking to improve their lives.
From the swinging
hoes of the singing women of uBuhlebesizwe gardens to the eager faces of
women in an urban cyber café, ICTs are bringing about small changes,
empowering communities of activists with information and the ability to
network, changing people’s lives and behaviours.
For more
information:
http://www.greennetwork.org.za
and
http://www.womensnet.org.za
and
http://flamme.org
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