[Reader-list] Villages Online -------- ePoor.org from Pakistan

[Zubair Faisal Abbasi]

Greetings from Pakistan and ePoor.org!

ePoor.org a non-profit civil society initiative has developed and working on
a flagship Programme in Pakistan by the name of Villages Online (VOL). The
Programme,
rooted in community development approach, aims at bridging digital divide
with pro-poor perspective and strives to make IT relevant for the
socio-economic needs of the poor communities. Attached is a brief outlook of
the programme and basic facts about IT and Inequality (Annex: 1).

Looking forward to hearing from you for.

Zubair Faisal Abbasi.
ePoor.org
IT empowers

				Villages Online
			A Programme of ePoor.org

Never-ending poverty, poor opportunities, poor social services, and poor
governance, are some of the peculiarities that form the overall aura of
rural life in Pakistan. The VOL (http://epoor.org/vol) initiative of
ePoor.org, is spearheaded to change the development scene, increase social
well-being, and expand opportunities of wealth generation by making IT
relevant to community needs at the village levels.

The Concept:

In order to increase the potentials of socio-economic growth and development
in the rural areas, there is an urgent need to harness the innovative
solutions of IT for poverty reduction, better service provision (like health
care, education, information on rural and urban market situation), and good
governance.

In other words the concept stresses upon the urgent need of bridging digital
divide between the rich and poor, between urban and rural, and increasing
digital opportunities at the village and community levels.

The Key

The key to make IT based solutions effective, efficient, and relevant for
communities lies in harnessing both the technical and social side of human
expertise and knowledge. This means creating a synergy between the
experienced and intelligent social-ware and increasingly capable
technical-ware developed by IT professionals. The social-ware is available
in the shape of networks of pro-poor individuals and organizations at the
village and community levels while the technical-ware is actuated and
customized in the hi-tech IT parks. Both of these -wares offer innumerable
opportunities of innovative work and mutual linking. ------  VOL is striving
to bridge the two sources for greater development effectiveness.

The Philosophy

The philosophy of ePoor.org, in carrying out VOL, is to work on the demand
side of information, namely by enhancing peoples' capacity to use knowledge
(through creation of social capital), rather than purely on the supply side
of the process (of which a good example is the creation of IT training
schools without attention to creating the demand for such information in
rural areas). This builds upon the rural community development approach,
which has focused similarly on the demand side of other interventions. The
philosophy of ePoor.org is based on the highly successful efforts of
community development led by such pioneers as Akhter Hameed Khan and Shoaib
Sultan Khan. These efforts revolve around the creation of social capital to
enhance the coping and adaptive capacities and strategies of the poor.

The aims of VOL includes:

·	Make IT relevant and contributive for socio-economic uplift including
decision-making support, better services delivery, and improved digital
reach-out (networking etc.) for participatory development and growth.

.	Increase village level capacity to absorb, generate, disseminate, and
navigate information and knowledge repositories.

Strategies and Deliverables

In the present shape, the process and structure of IT spread in societies is
giving rise to digital divides at the local and global levels. For example,
There are more Internet account holders in London than in the whole of
Africa. About 80% of the world's population has no access to reliable
telecommunications and about one-third has no access to electricity,
according to the Panos Institute http://www.oneworld.org/panos/. As a matter
of fact, IT has innumerable implications in distributing the opportunities
of wealth generation, resource allocation, and social development.
Not-so-surprisingly, according to the 1999 Human Development Report issued
by the United Nations, information technology is actually widening the gap
between the world's haves and have-nots, not narrowing it.

In Pakistan, the IT Policy, is primarily geared to create an enabling
environment for IT sector growth and leaves room for pro-poor perspective;
the link between IT and poverty eradication has to be explored further and
vigorously perused. This situation gives opportunity to analyze the
long-term implications of a predominantly urban-centered IT incidence in
sharpening the digital divide and generating distorted digital opportunities
between rural and urban areas.

Keeping in mind the above scenario, and the core themes of ePoor.org
programmes, the Villages Online initiative would like to spearhead the
following strategies and deliverables so that the wizardry of IT expands
horizons of opportunities for poor communities:

1- Policy Advice and Advocacy

VOL would actively develop policy advices and advocate the need of pro-poor
IT solutions, policies, and practices.  With emphasis upon local content
generation in local languages.

2- Partnership Development

With the vision of pooling technical and social resources, VOL would develop
strategic partnerships with other pro-poor organizations, institutions, and
individuals and those excelling in the IT sector. This would be designed for
an effective outreach to the poor groups, networking, resource and knowledge
sharing so that VOL meaningfully enables the poor communities to benefit
from the IT route.

In the specific sense, these partnerships would aim at ensuring to deliver:

A - Regular, sustainable, and egalitarian access to IT infrastructure at the
village levels.

B - Regular, sustainable, and egalitarian access to relevant information
about services (health, education, sanitation, development schemes, etc.),
market situation (local, provincial and national for rural produce and human
resource) and credit availability (government and non-government scheme for
poverty reduction).

C - Most importantly, ePoor.org sees kiosks and cyber cafés not only as
passive information consumers but relevant information generators so that
poor communities really benefit from IT route the route which would be there
own.

3- Online Information Repositories and CD ROMs

VOL would collect information on poverty profiles, demography, economy,
history, social services profile (like health care and education),
governance structures, marketable produce, and development schemes from the
rural areas including individuals and organizations. Then it would digitize,
create online databases, and make it available for navigation through
websites and CD ROMs.

4- Meta Portal of ePoor.org

VOL will be cyber-linked with other projects of ePoor.org. For example it
will receive a complementary navigational support from the following:
·	eHealth: Expanding Health Care Services
·	eM at RT: Expanding Market of The Rural and Traditional

ANNEX 1.

B A S I C      F A C T S
·	The global online community has grown rapidly --- from about 16 million
Internet users in 1995 to an estimated 304 million users in March 2000.
·	In 1998 more than 26% of all people living in the United States were
surfing the Internet, compared with 0.8% of all people in Latin America and
the Caribbean, 0.1% in Su-Saharan Africa and 0.4% in South Asia.
·	South Asia, with 23 per cent of the world’s people, has less than one per
cent of the world’s Internet users.
·	The typical Internet user worldwide is male, under 35 years old, with a
university education and high income, urban based and English speaking—a
member of a very elite minority.
·	A computer costs the average Bangladeshi more than eight years’ income,
compared with one month’s wage for the average American.
·	The assets of the 200 richest people are more than the combined income of
41% of the world's people. A yearly contribution of 1% of their wealth or $
8 billion could provide universal access to primary education for all.
·	Among 159 countries with available data, 50 had negative average annual
growth in GNP per capita in 1990-98, and only four Sub-Saharan countries had
minimum rate for doubling incomes in generation.

< SOURCE: UNDP Human Development Report 1999 and 2000>


Regards,
Zubair Faisal Abbasi.
CEO/Project Director,
ePoor.org
Waheed Plaza, West 52, First Floor,
Blue Area, Islamabad, Pakistan.
Ph: 092-051-2201484, 0303-7759274
++++++++
Pro-Poor means enhancing capacity of the POOR to perform PRO i.e., 'Poverty
reduction', 'Remoteness reduction' and 'Opportunity generation'.