Isolated rural communities often lack the services and opportunities that people in cities take for granted. Hospitals, libraries, banks and government agencies can be dozens—or even hundreds—of kilometres away. Access to jobs, learning opportunities and even basic information is often limited.
Increasingly, telecentres provide an opportunity to tap into these services without ever leaving the village.
Banking, library and government services are already available through telecentres in some countries, and their number is growing. In places with more informal or marginal economies, microcredit and rural atm services are even popping up. Advances in low-bandwidth video and telemedicine are making it possible for villagers to access doctors from a distance.
Offering vital services through telecentres means reduced travel time and dramatically improved access for rural residents, even when they can’t afford their own computers and internet access.
Telecentres can also provide more human connections to the outside world: connections to relatives who have moved to the city or around the globe. In small communities the world over, people often leave for jobs and education. Keeping in touch with relatives in the village— and transferring funds back to them—have always been a difficult and costly matter. Telecentres make this kind of connection much easier by providing everything from simple e-mail to affordable financial remittance services.
Clearly, it’s not the computer in the telecentre that offers so much benefit to isolated communities. Rather, it’s the human connections made possible by the telecentre, networked to the entire world.
“At my age, this is just like learning to spell again — it’s like learning everything anew,” says Margarita Neuculen proudly. Margarita is a machi — a mapuche medicine woman and priestess—and for the past two years, an enthusiastic patron of the telecentre in Puerto Saavedra, Chile.
chile: isolated, but never alone
When margarita visits the telecentre to check her e-mail and help her children with their homework, she’s welcomed by librarian Eugenia Vivanco, the telecentre manager. They sip their tea and chat by the wood stove that heats the telecentre. Whether traveling on foot, by bus or by oxcart, the reunion is always cheerful. In a community as isolated as puerto saavedra, reunions such as theirs are what keep this community together.
Puerto Saavedra is a town of 3,000 residents, mostly farmers, fishermen and artisans. It’s located 1,000 kilometres from Santiago in Chile’s poorest region, Araucanía. The area is home to a large number of mapuche villagers, who are indigenous to southern Chile.
in 1960, the town was devastated by an earthquake and tsunami, which took many lives and changed the town forever. Disasters are particularly cruel here: the closest hospital is 200 kilometres away, as are most regional government offices. Today, it’s still possible to spot the submerged church tower offshore; a few trees can still be seen above the water. When the tsunami hit southeast Asia in December 2004, villagers went to the telecentre and watched it unfold in dismay: the same monster had attacked once more in another part of the world.
The telecentre at Puerto Saavedra is one of 32 launched by Chile’s Community Information Network across Araucanía. Promoted by the Universidad de La Frontera de Temuco since 1997 and headed by Rodrigo Garrido and Manuel Morales, the network is a pioneering community technology project in Chile. It furnishes equipment and connectivity, offers training, supplies resources and supports the local telecentre managers, helping connect Araucanía to the rest of the country.
Manuel and Rodrigo travel the rain-soaked roads of Araucanía, visiting each telecentre. Though weary and drenched after many hours traveling, they chat at length with staff, who welcome them affectionately. “Thanks to them, we are what we are,” Eugenia boasts.
Things are not always easy, but the team never stops dreaming. They’d like to implement a satellite system to help fishermen spot schools of fish, as well as develop a telemedicine project so the villagers can see their relatives in hospital. Villagers hope to develop online content in the Mapuche language so the technology better serves the needs of their culture.
The first tool at Puerto Saavedra’s telecentre was not a computer: just a photocopier in the library. Eventually the first computer arrived; soon the telecentre bubbled with activity. Eugenia has managed to draw an initially reluctant community towards it. “We decided to train the lonkos, the Mapuche community chiefs, first because they would spread curiosity. The rest would lose their fear and then approach us.”
The town is grateful for her work. “She takes care of us really well,” María del Carmen Nahuel says. “She has never discriminated against anyone whether the person is Mapuche or not... And that is what we want, because we don’t want there to be differences.”
Adopting new technology has not been easy for local residents. Accustomed to working in the fields, handling ploughs and shovels, they find this machine of plastic, metal and glass daunting. “I thought I’d damage the keyboard if I touched it, that my hands were too heavy due to working on the loom,” says artisan Ester Llancaleo.
Rosa Porma Millavil teaches Mapudungun, the Mapuche language, and is just starting to learn how to use computers. “I wanted to learn, but I was afraid I would break something,” she says, laughing. “The first time I touched the machine I was perspiring. I ended up dripping wet, I was so nervous. My brain, my muscles, hurt so much that I was stiff and had to go to bed.”
But the will to learn is great. And Eugenia motivates them, as Rosa explains. “She says that I’m a good student, because I laugh. If I make a mistake, I laugh. I don’t get cross. I’m not ashamed.”
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“I move from my pots and pans to poetry on the Internet,” explains poet Doña Berta. She spends her time at her local telecentre writing poetry, after completing her many domestic chores. Her feelings are like those of many women, both Mapuche and Chilean, who’ve found a window for growth through their telecentre.
Most of the people using the local telecentres are women. They are proud of their culture and transmit it to their children, speaking in Mapudungun. They perform their religious ceremonies and work on their handicrafts, but they are determined not to live in the past. There is so much to be gained from connecting to the rest of the world.
“Culture is not lost with the computer,” adds Margarita Neuculen. “It is not lost with electricity, or with television. Because you carry culture within yourself. I am proud of being a Mapuche. Even so, I want to continue learning how to use the computer and to communicate with the world, but not because of this will I stop being a Mapuche.”
“Traditions are carried within,” she concludes. “You carry them in your piuque: your heart.”
N-Logue: Bringing Telemedicine to India’s Rural Villages, One Kiosk at a Time
In the south indian village of Thirukalakodi, 21-year-old Bhartisala has become a medical lifeline for the local community. The village, in a distant corner of Tamil Nadu state, has no doctor or hospital; distant travel on local roads is difficult. Thanks to Bhartisala’s Internet kiosk and its new telemedicine service, the distance between patients and successful medical diagnoses has shrunk dramatically.
Bhartisala operates a kiosk affiliated with n-Logue communications, one of the most successful rural technology companies in South Asia. Using fixed wireless technology, n-Logue has deployed Internet kiosks in more than 2,000 rural villages across India, in partnership with local entrepreneurs.
Bhartisala is one of the first telecentre operators in the n-Logue network to participate in a groundbreaking telemedicine program. She and several other operators in Tamil Nadu have installed remedi technology, a tool that collects a patient’s blood pressure, heart rate and other vital functions, then transmits them over the internet. Each day, a doctor in the city of Thiruppatur consults with Bhartisala’s clients online, collecting important medical data through the remedi device. Bhartisala gets around five villagers a day coming to the internet kiosk specifically for these medical consultations.
This system, when deployed nationally, will help rural villages gain instant access to doctors, even if they’re dozens of kilometres from the nearest medical clinic. “The next key challenge is to get medicine delivery arranged into the village,” adds n-Logue ceo P. G. Ponappa.
This system, when deployed nationally, will help rural villages gain instant access to doctors, even if they’re dozens of kilometres from the nearest medical clinic.
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