Telecentre - What do they offer..?

Telecentres are there to serve the communities. Then, what are they serving..?

The majority in the world provide Computer services, Photocopy, Printing, Photo-printing...and also telephone calls at very remote areas. But the list is quite narrow, unfortunately in majority places. Nevertheless, the happy news is there are places offer an exciting packages. Following is a list generated through research interviews:

Information: agricultural practices, public health and technology information, weather forecasts, travel schedules, government schemes. D.Net in Bangladesh already offers an example of a pay for use telecentre information service.

Employability: there are increasing examples of telecentres focusing on employability services, training people in specific skills needed to get a job and helping them with job seeking. As this has an economic benefit to the community members, they are willing to pay for this service.

Business process outsourcing: at least two initiatives have emerged so far with the intent of using telecentres as platforms for business process outsourcing. The telecentre provides local people with a place to earn an income and increase digital skills, and the local telecentre manager generates income either through access fees or a percentage of the money earned from the job.

eGovernance: this includes transactional services like land records, passport applications, government applications and submitting complaints to officials. These can become an economic driver for telecentres if proper revenue sharing arrangements can be made with governments.

Education: most telecentres already offer – and charge for – ICT skills training, which in turn generates demand for other services they offer. Some telecentres are moving into other education services including vocational skills and literacy.

Retailing: some telecentres in India and Latin America have proposed the idea of operating as retail outlets, either directly or by becoming an order point and shipping destination for ecommerce. Some of these proposals focus on socially beneficial products like environmentally friendly cooking stoves. Tarahaat in India sell energy saving bulbs, while they offer sewing machine training at Tarakendras (telecentres).

There are also a large number of purely economic services that telecentres can – and should – consider offering when the conditions are right. Entertainment is the most obvious example. Computer games, movie showings and digital photography all have significant revenue potential for telecentres. Also, basic access services like Voice-Over-Internet (VOIP) long distance calling and e-mail access for tourists in rural areas can be big revenue drivers. Services like these can be used to cross subsidize more socially oriented services.

Value Addition of entrepreneurial capacity building

The word 'Capacity building' is no more exciting in the development sector. Common question - how are these capacity building workshops truly add the value?

A compelling story was found in Sri Lanka, with the Sarvodaya - Fusion (www.fusion.lk). The value addition was done by another non-traditional partner; NESsT (Non-profit Enterprise and Self-sustainability Team: www.nesst.org).

NESsT engagement with Fusion (facilitated by telecentre.org) was to support the telecentre family project (www.tcf.lk), which is a network of telecentre operators collaborated by Sarvodaya (NGO; www.sarvodaya.org) and ICTA (State institution; www.icta.lk).

How did they impact up on Sarvodaya telecentre network?

By the time NESsT was landing in Sri Lanka, telecentre network of Sarvodaya - Fusion was undergoing a tough challenge - the common one to many networks; how to sustain their growing telecentre network, under ever increasing management cost (utility bills, maintenance, staff, etc.).?

Out of 31 telecentre in operation, Fusion was planning to close down 10 of them. But NESsT capacity building workshop shifted the decision 1800!

Just after 6 months, Fusion set an ambitious target of 10mil Rs annual turn over.

What was the trick?

NESsT's capacity building workshop provided the missing ingredients to the already entrepreneurial Fusion team. They had been running telecentres as decentralized operations for nearly 10 years. But, not as a properly coordinated, business operation.

What were the key decisions?

• a competent business manager was introduced to the central operation as an advisor (not as an overall manager)
• participatory planning were carried out to study the feasible services / products
• business plans were developed for each and every telecentre
• financial targets were set against each telecentre
  coordination systems were put in place to monitor the progress weekly basis
• help desks were rejuvenated

The operational progress reached by the overall network for first two months of operation reported to be nearly 50% (against the set targets). But financial recovery is still less than 15%. At this moment of time, they are attending to 'mid course corrections' to fine tune the lose elements of the operation (for eg quick attendance to computer breakdowns at telecentres).

Small presence of NESsT did a magic..!

ICT Courses - a consistant source of income

In many parts of the world, telecentre operators recognize ICT skill development as the default path to income generation. Yet, many telecentre activists argue against this choice. Why..? One argument is - telecentres are opportunity windows to empower communities. ICT Skill development is a too narrow educational engagement. The other argument is that telecentres can become ICT training centres distracting from their main social purpose.

In a recent participatory workshop conducted by NESsT (http://www.nesst.com/) at Fusion (http://www.fusion.lk/) of Sarvodaya, Sri Lanka, 25 telecentre operators were tasked to list the potential income generation products for the telecentres to reach financial targets. The discussion lead to list over 20 potential products; which consisted knowledge products, telecentre based market research, Business Process Outsourcing, online marketing etc. At the end of the workshop, the short listing ended putting ICT Skill Development at the top (once again).

The reasons:

• Consistent demand at the rural communities


• Most of the telecentre operators are familiar with offering ICT courses (thus no need of additional capacity building)


• No initial investment required


• Required material (eg syllabuses) are easily accessible


• Standardization institutes are available in the near rural settings


• Required infrastructure facilities already available

Why not BPO (which had reached the second potential product in the list)..?

• Telecentre operators are not familiar


• Required lot of capacity building


• Required capital investments


• Absence of support services


• No supportive infrastructure


• Absence of enabling environment (legal setting, back up support services).

Informediary Lady - the central figure of Public Relations

Informediary lady plays the key role in information centred income generation model of Pallithtaya kendra (telecentre) (http://www.pallitathya.org), a unique telecentre model of D.Net (www.dnet-bangladesh.org) of Bangladesh. A lady who is good looking and demonstrating good public relation skills, plays the central role at the telecentre. She has two duties to perform, a). convince the incoming customer (mostly very poor villagers) to use the paid services, b). popularize the telecentre within local communities.


She has a routine work pattern. If somebody visits the telecentre, she welcomes her cordially and listen to them carefully in order to understand their problem / need. Then she is trained to assess whether telecentre has the capacity to provide a satisfactory service, if so, will describe the available information to villager, about help desk, information databases (which are made available as central services by D.Net). Finally, inform the price model and let the villagers to decide whether to use the services or not.

If villager agrees to pay - they will be offered a 'service card' which works as an invoice to the villager and also an entry into telecentre administration records.

The lady would further assist the villager by searching information databases, and finally would provide printed version of information.

If the required information were not available in the database systems, then the request would be made to the help desk at D.Net. which is resourced by subject experts.

On an average day, about 10 - 25 people visit the Kendra requesting services. Though at early stages of telecentre (in 2005) people were reluctant to pay for the services, by now they had recognized the value and pay without hesitation.

Following were some extracts from pervious day entries;

Visitor 1 - requested education information (Web addresses on universities, Visa application processes) aiming to search higher education prospects. (Available at data bases).

Visitor 2 - requested some help to resolve legal issues (and requested expert services from the help desk),

Visitor 3 - fisherman wanted to get some information about common fish farming problems which were available at database system.

Visitor 4 - another shrimp farmer wanted to find quick remedy for an emerging epidemic in his farm. He wanted a quick solution, a medicine to apply which was referred to the help desk. The medicine prescribed by the help desk was not available in the area. Thus informediary lady offered help to locate medicine from nearby area.

Pricing: content printout - 6taka /page, reading only - 2taka/ 10minutes, calling help desk - 2.5taka/ minute. (1US$ = 68Taka approx).

Legal help - first two minutes were free.

Simple tools for Income generation

Water testing kit is familiar subject in agricultural laboratories in many parts of the world. But in Bangladesh, it has become a popular equipment at rural telecentres. More interestingly, it is part of the tool kit carried by the mobile lady (http://smilingharsha.blogspot.com/2007/07/mobile-lady-is-popular-figure-in.html) who peddles the bicycle from village to village, offering services while connecting communities to Pallithtaya kendra (telecentre) (http://www.pallitathya.org),.

Shrimp farmers require regular testing of water pH, which decide the healthy harvest of shrimp ponds at the end. In the absence of Mobile service, either farmers have to buy equipment (about 2500taka) or else travel long distances to get the same service.

Upon request, mobile lady read the water pH meter measurement in a matter of minutes. Then she informs the meter reading to the help desk (maintained by D.Net; www.dnet-bangladesh.org) who provide additional information to the farmer, according to the pH meter reading.

Soil pH testing is another service offered by the same mobile lady, to crop cultivators. In an average month she manages to carry out 6 - 8 testings, while 27 tests carried out in a recorded peak period of use.

Mobile lady - story of women empowerment

Mobile lady - is a popular figure in extreme rural communities of Bangladesh. People await to see her arrival to access very basic information - at times which not only decides the prices for their harvest, occasionally helps to find a medical help too. She is playing a vital role, as her visit to the village, help people to avoid days long journeys to the distant town ships to acquire the same information.

As the name implies she peddles a bicycle while carrying a mobile phone, from village to village. And connect the village people with the Pallithtaya kendra (telecentre) (http://www.pallitathya.org), or D.Net help desk (www.dnet-bangladesh.org), for the required information services.

She has a minimum task of connecting 75people / month with the help desk services, which she finds as an achievable target. And travels 5-7 km a day to reach this target.

‘I feel proud when I see people looking forward to see my arrival at many villages around my home town’ – those are her own words.

In a country where empowerment of women is a big challenge for the development workers, mobile lady concept made herself a proud woman. ICT in empowerment..!

Village Dilemma

I have seen this problem repeating many times in many parts of the world. And I have seen it again at Gampaha, a suburban village in Sri Lanka.

Economic sustainability needs the cultivation of entrepreneurial qualities. In simple terms - greed to make profits. For a Socially Driven community leader who thrive on altruistic motives - helping poor, offering volunteer spirit - this is an utterly bitter pill to swallow.

Mr. Wijewickrama (59yrs) who is a school teacher by profession, is the most respected leader in this village of 1400 families. His leadership lead the village from very humble footing in 1973 to one of the leading Sarvodaya affiliated villages by 2007.

Village Information Centre (VIC) is one of the many developments that he had facilitated. Villagers contributed their own savings to build up the Community Hall, which shelters the VIC, along with a village pre-school (serving 45 children) and a small library. By variety of community based fund raising activities, they could manage to buy 4 refurbished computers to scale up the VIC. Sarvodaya (Fusion) district staff agreed to provide the technical support for training.

Now they have all the required facilities, and over 25 students are seeking computer lessons, but they dont have a qualified technical assistant to provide training. Sarvodaya is keen to provide training. Yet they have an unresolved issue.

Issue is on the pricing for services..!

Village committee mainly influenced by the Mr. Wijewickrama’s leadership, is not ready to charge a fee more than 600Rs / month, (6US$). For Fusion, this is not feasible. The minimum feasible charge according to their calculation is 1600Rs/month.

It looks like - convincing the village leadership on the break even point analysis had become the biggest challenge for Sarvodaya - Fusion staff.

He listens when the Sarvodaya district staff explain the importance of keeping a sensible price.

‘At 600Rs. we cannot pay the utility bills, cannot replace the computers when they are old, cannot afford to pay the training assistant…..!..!’ -

Then he repeats the same question..!

‘This is a very poor village. Even paying 600Rs is not feasible for them. Their fathers and mothers contributed to put up this building and even to buy these computers. Now…why should they pay more to learn..?’

Social enterprising is not that simple..!