the etuktuk project

Today I thought of visiting the Kanapathiwata tea estate line houses to test some of the Digital stories. Pavi had made a Digital story from our last visit to Riverside line houses. We thought of showing the Digital story to the kanapathiwatta people and see how the feedback is.

We left the station at around 3.00 p.m in the etuktuk. We did not carry the usual etuktuk equipment in it because we were not going on a usual recording trip. We go the lap top and pavi got the cassette recorder. From the station to mawathura town it takes about 5 minutes to get there. Its straight down hill. One of the line house colony is also situated in mawathura too which I did my research earlier.

This time we were visiting the upper parts of the Kanapathiwatta estate. From Mawathura we had to take the galath road , a narrow road up hill. After travelling 10 minutes up hill I the main road we took the dusty narrow road which lead to the kanapathiwata tea estate line house community. The road condition was very bad. After few minutes bumpy ride I the tuktuk we could see the houses. There were about 20 line houses situated from the top of the hill to bottom. These line houses were different from the riverside line houses. The river side line houses had 4 houses in a single line and the space for each house was very limited. But here only two houses are there in a single line. And the houses seem to have more space. The houses looked very neat and clean from the outside. Electric cable can be seen going I to the houses which meant that they got electricity too. Water taps were seen in some of the houses. Some houses had nice small gardens too.

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This video was made by Pavitheran from the Kothmale Community Radio Station. It is the result of several visits the etuktuk has made to the community living in the line houses at the Riverside tea estate. It tells the story of the struggles the community have in obtaining fresh drinking water. Pavi along with members of the community have used the video to lobby the local politician to give assistance in fixing the problem. Later in a live radio interview on Kothmale Community Radio the politician agreed to find a solution, as yet he hasn’t acted upon this promise but the community are confident that he was genuine in his intentions and the problem will be resolved.

This work is indicative of how the etuktuk and the local research team is engaging with the local community and mobilising and facilitating their use of mixed-media to solve and the radio station to solve local issues.

The film is in the Tamil language and does not have subtitles.

The etuktuk project was highlighted by a recent publication from AED as an access solution in the telecentre movement.

Three organizations, the Academy for Educational Development (AED), Microsoft® Corporation and IDRC’s telecenter.org collaborated to develop this book, Making the Connection: Scaling Telecenters for Development. Two AED staff, Barbara Fillip and Dennis Foote, were the principal authors of the book. Other AED staff contributed content, developed the published version and created this HTML version. Also, many of the case studies presented in the book are from projects that AED’s Information Technology Applications Center has carried out over the last two decades. Microsoft® provided the funding for the writing and publishing of the book and to develop and host the HTML version for the web. Microsoft® staff also contributed case studies from projects that they are supporting around the world and provided invaluable insights to improving the book’s narrative. The professionals at IDRC’s telecenter.org program also contributed significantly to this book by providing case studies, suggestions for enhancing the narrative and feedback to make the publication more effective

Making the Connection: Scaling Telecenters for Development – This book identifies and discusses the most pressing issues facing the global telecenter movement, presents a condensed view of the current state of knowledge with regard to telecenters, and highlights possible paths forward. The book was developed through a partnership between the Academy for Educational Development, Microsoft® and IDRC’s telecenter.org. The primary goal of this book is help people move forward, to inspire them and whenever possible, to guide the growth of this movement.

The book’s URL: http://connection.aed.org