Women and ICT

I had occasion to evaluate IDRC (International Development Research Centre) of Canada's projects in Asia. IDRC has been a great pioneer in Asia, starting up Internet Service Providers and telecentres. As part of the project, I was able to travel to telecentres in Indonesia and India. What really impressed me was to see the various women involved in these projects.

In India, I visited 5 village centres, and many were run by women with only elementary school education. These were women who had never dealt with computers before, but decided to take on the task of running these telecentres, because they were motivated to teach these new skills to their children. Some of these women even learnt how to repair computers, how to give school children lessons in how to use the Internet, whilst others started small businesses (running accounting services using these computers for other women NGOs). All very exciting efforts and very grassroots. It was even more exciting to run into some of these women at WSIS Tunis and to meet many other interesting ones.

Kudos to IDRC and the NGOs they support (e.g. the MSSRF in India, Universitas Terbuka in Indonesia etc). Here are some interesting pictures to share during my visits.