the etuktuk project

The Stockholm Challenge Award 2008 announces 145 projects in six categories

The Stockholm Challenge is a biannual awards programme since 1994 when it was launched by the City of Stockholm. It is now owned by the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH) in Stockholm and sponsored by the City of Stockholm, Ericsson and Sida.

The following article was contributed by Indrajit Basu and appeared in the digital communities feature of Government Technology: solutions for state and local government in the information age.

http://www.govtech.com/dc/articles/261123

Sri Lanka — Ingenuity Extends Mobile Communications in Remote Region

In the streets South Asia, the Tuktuk (so called for the peculiar sound of its engine) — basically a three-wheeled motorcycle modified to carry passengers — is a familiar sight. Its popularity stems from the fact that it is almost as affordable as a two-wheeler and it can squeeze into the smallest of lanes and travel over the bumpiest of roads. But up in the hilly region of Kothmale in central Sri Lanka, this humble vehicle has evolved into something much more than just a mode of cheap transport. It has become a full-fledged mobile telecenter, literally taking the concept of Community Multimedia Centre (CMC) to community doorsteps and empowering its people to bring about change and improvements.

In fact so innovative is this concept that it even won the the Stockholm Challenge Global Knowledge Partnership Award in Kuala Lumpur in December — under the Public Administration category — as a project that not only tops the list of ICT (Information Communication Technology) initiatives supporting development, but also for taking ICT to communities that have been marginalized by remoteness, lack of infrastructural facilities and poverty.

With a laptop, battery-operated printer, camera, telephone, recorder and scanner, and with Internet provided via a CDMA-enabled wireless connection, a small radio broadcasting set that can narrowcast content through the CDMA-internet connection, and everything powered by a 1000W generator, a dozen-odd Tuktuks (called eTuktuks) roam the 20 odd villages in the 30 kilometers radius of Kothmale everyday to extend the services of a traditional telecenter and radio station.

(Read more…)

The etuktuk was recently announced the winner of the Stockholm Challenge GKP award! We are grateful for the recognition of the challenge jury, who said the etuktuk was “a project that electronically expands the community center into isolated rural areas.” The award ceremony took place as part of the 3rd Global Knowledge Conference in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

We had a great time at the conference and it was inspiring to see others taking on the concept of the etuktuk. Alcatel-Lucent had their own etuktuk on display. This concept vehicle has already been at several major expositions around the world. Alcatel-Lucent see potential for the etuktuk’s to “enable cost-effective expansion of the broadband footprint” into rural areas. Another etuktuk inspired project was presented at the GK3 conference - the etrike! This is a proposal to build a mobile telecentre to service the urban communities of Manila in the Phillipines. We look forward to working with both these initatives!

For more information on the Stockholm Challenge GKP award please visit the challenge website. http://www.stockholmchallenge.se/news/news/1929

Yesterday the Examination Department released the Grade V scholarship examination results and they made it available on the Internet. As in the previous years many parents came to the CMC to get the results of their child sooner because it takes about two to three days for the result sheets to be delivered to schools via post. CMC charged Rs. 20 for a result with a Printout.

As this was happening I remembered an incident which happened last year. When I visited in the etuktuk to the rural village “lagumdeniya” to capture the moments of a village Sunday school prize giving festival I met a chatty little boy. He had done the grade five exam and was waiting for the results to come to the school. But the results have already been put on the Internet about one week back. I asked him whether he knew it or not. He said he knew but does not have access to the facilities so he had to wait until the results come to the school. All the students living in the urban areas get their results on the same day it is released but the story is different for the rural areas.

(Read more…)

The tuktuk, a three-wheeled motorcycle, is a familiar sight on the streets of South Asia. Its usefulness for getting people from place to place, squeezing into the smallest lanes and over the bumpiest roads, has made it indispensable. But in the rolling hills of Kothmale in Sri Lanka, the humble tuktuk has evolved into something much more than a mode of transport.

The eTUKTUK is a self-contained mobile telecentre and radio broadcasting unit, housed within a traditional three-wheeler, which literally takes the Kothmale Community Multimedia Centre (KCMC) to the community’s doorstep. For more than eight years, KCMC has been serving as an interface between rural communities in the central hill region of Sri Lanka and new communication technologies. The eTUKTUK is stocked with a laptop, battery-operated printer, camera, telephone and scanner, with Internet provided via a CDMA-enabled wireless connection and a 1000W generator for electricity.

By directly accessing villages, eTUKTUK immediately strikes a chord with the local community, and it makes new technologies less daunting by presenting it to users in a familiar environment. The weekly route of the eTUKTUK is broadcast over the radio to inform listeners of the location and time that it will arrive in their community. The two loudspeakers mounted on the roof rack and powered by an amplifier and CD player can narrowcast radio programmes and announce the telecentre’s presence in a village. Judging by the scores of curious observes that the eTUKTUK attracts, it can safely be said that for once, reinventing the wheel actually did make sense.

The previous article is an excerpt from the UNESCO photo study publication ‘from access to engagement’. To download the publication click here

UNESCO releases Photo Study publication on Community Access Centres

The origin of this photo-study publication lies in a simple question: “How can we best capture the exciting developments that are taking place in Community Access Centres?”

Community Access Centres take different forms and go by different names: Community Learning Centres; Community Multimedia Centres; ICT Centres; Telecentres; Resource Centres or Community Libraries. . But whatever their name, the fundamental idea is the same: to facilitate progress from “Access to Engagement”!

In ways small and large, Community Access Centres provide support for breaking the chains of illiteracy or aiding the vocational skills of people displaced by conflict. They have helped young women improve their ability to express themselves and articulate their opinions via community radio or community television. They have also provided young people with useful and marketable skills crucial to their own development. The Centres expose communities to new sources of knowledge and provide hands-on experience in the integration of new technologies such as the Internet with more traditional channels of communication.

Community Access Centres are spaces where local communities translate the vision of human development in ways that make sense to their lives. This photo publication takes you to the places where such wonderful things happen!

To download the publication click here

This video outlines the recent activities of the Kothmale Community Radio Station. Featuring interviews with staff and management of the station it follows one of the stations announcers into a Tamil Tea Estate community in central Sri Lanka. Using the stations etuktuk, a mobile telecentre and radio production studio, the community participate in a live broadcast from the mobile. Filmed and Directed by Kalinga Seneviratne and Produced by the Asian Media Information and Communication Centre (AMIC).

It was a busy day for me. KCR had organized a small workshop for the local public librarians in the Gampola area. We were suppose to talk about the use of new technologies in the field of radio and how the same technologies can be use in the public library’s. In the same day etuktuk had planned to visit a estate community to do a computer literacy program. This was the first time etuktuk went to a estate community to do a computer literacy program. How ever I had to participate in the workshop held in Gelioya public library about 20Km from KCR. I wished if I could be in two places at the same time.

Sriyapali who is the CMC manager and one of the relief staff members of KCR had planned to go to visit the Kanapathiwatta estate nearby KCR( 5 minutes from KCR). Intension of this visit was to educate the estate children and young people in the estate about the computers technologies and encourage them to use the facilities provided in the CMC. Lac of participation for the estate community in the CMC activities is one of the main issues with the CMC and this was spoken i the CMC staff meetings by the EAR researcher.

One of the main reasons for lack of participation for the Tamil communities is the absence of a Tamil speaking trainer in the CMC. For the last 10 months I have witnessed very few Tamil youngsters coming to the center to be trained in computer skills but they never continue to come. The main reason for this is language. Absence of a Tamil speaking person makes it harder to be in the center for person from the Tamil community. This was reviled in one of my interveives in the same tea estate community. When I was interviewing a housewife from the same estate I asked her about the CMC. And her reply was, “my children use to come there to use computers when the foreign lady was there (in 1999-2002 when an Australian volunteer worked at the CMC), but after that they didn’t go there. Because nobody was there to teach them”. This clearly meant that they felt unwelcome at the CMC.

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This short introductory video highlights the functionality of the etuktuk, a mobile telecentre and radio production studio operating out of the Kothmale Community Radio Station in Sri Lanka. The video was filmed and edited on location with special thanks to Sam de Silva.

A three-day workshop on community broadcasting aimed at developing the capacities of regional and community radio broadcasters in Sri Lanka was recently held in Kothmale Community Radio (KCR).
In a media environment inundated by commercial radio, how can public and community radio broadcasting cope? How can we develop participatory and community based broadcasting methodologies that cater to the needs of our audiences? How can we consistently build and develop our technical and communication skills? These were some of the questions that producers and representatives from seven regional and community based radio services in Sri Lanka discussed and put into practice during the workshop which was organized by KCR and Sri Lanka Broadcasting Corporation (SLBC) in collaboration with UNESCO.

A series of four workshops has been scheduled through the month of May. The first, on community broadcasting, brought together fourteen participants to learn the concepts/methods of community broadcasting and to share their experiences in the broadcasting field. This process enabled participants to understand the importance of community broadcasting and adapt quality monitoring and control methods to programmes broadcast through national, regional and community radio stations in Sri Lanka. To make content effective the importance of local audience, context and needs were emphasized. (Read more…)