Taiguey Foundation "Workshop on Call Centre / Centre Community Access to ICTs in Dominican Republic, marks the beginning of a new dynamic exchange

Section: Guanaba.net Community Telecentre , Telecentre Caribbean

Telecentre Workshop / Centre Community Access to ICTs in Dominican Republic, marks the beginning of a new dynamic exchange

November 30th, 2008

On Monday November 17th was held the workshop "Sustainability Initiatives Collective Access to ICTs in the Dominican Republic in order to" analyze and share among the various governmental and nongovernmental organizations in the Dominican Republic to promote access initiatives ICT collective lessons learned, best practices, work methods, resources used, the impact of these initiatives in the communities and the challenges to ensure sustainability of these initiatives and increase their social impact in developing human communities and their inhabitants. " The Workshop was conducted under the auspices of the National Commission for Information Society and Taiguey Foundation , and concluded with the proposal to create a new virtual swap space

The workshop was a real sharing of experiences where representatives of government initiatives and civil society, such as Computer Training Centres (ITC) of Indotel, School Laboratories and Virtual Classrooms of the Secretary of State for Education, Centers Youth Information of the Secretariat of Youth, World Vision Sur Futuro, the INABIMA, Municipalities and the Foundation Taiguey accompanied by special guest Silvia Caicedo, international organization Telecentre.org participated and shared their experiences, identifying challenges ( see here the papers and reports) and exploring possible solutions sharing their good practices and lessons learned (see here the list of participant s)

The event counted with the assistance of Mr. José Rafael Vargas, Director General of the National Telecommunications Institute (INDOTEL) , who outlined his commitment to continuity initiatives, as the workshop in question contribute to the exchange of experiences of different actors in order to achieve sustainability of the centers. Also Ms. Caicedo International Center for Development Research of Canada (IDRC) told us about the global telecentre movement driven from Telecentre.org and invited us to involve ourselves in a Dominican Network of Telecentres and part of the alliance Caribbean Telecentre (ACT! Vate) , in the process of forming.

In this meeting also shared the results of the research monograph on the operation of the Collective Access Centres promoted by the Dominican state, conducted by the research department of the National Bureau of Statistics and Taiguey Foundation. (See presentation )

The expectations created for this meeting were overcome, the participants expressed his interest and enthusiasm in pursuing this type of event, it was agreed to create a virtual space to continue the exchange and the formation of a more formal Commission from international institutions to continue the dialogue on Sustainability Cacts social impact, for each institution to propose a representative.

Links: Space on virtual exchange Collective Access Centres to ICTs (CACT) in Dominican Republic (Computer Training Centres, Community Technology Centres, Telecentres, Youth Information Centres, POULTRY, Community Information Centers, School Laboratories Open to the Community Libraries with Internet access, etc.)