Twin Pillars of Development, Capacity Building and Universal Access,
through Train the Trainer Telecentres and Affordable Wireless Technologies
by
Daniel Stern, Project Director, Uganda Connect
dstern@uconnect.org
I think we need to be continually
reminded that it is the want of effective communications, and of information,
that is a major cause of the suffering and deprivations we witness in
sub-Saharan Africa.
I’ve just returned from
Uganda, where my team and I had helped to set up a new telecentre in Hoima,
about 200 kilometres northwest of Kampala.
People in Hoima and nearby Masindi have learned not to rely upon telecommunications because they are too
unreliable. On a weekday during
business hours it is nearly impossible to connect a phone call to Kampala.
Instead, if a merchant
would learn whether a consignment of goods has arrived for him in Kampala, he
knows he will need to take a shared taxi for a very uncomfortable and somewhat
dangerous three-hour journey. Or if a
pregnant woman is having a difficult labour - as there is little possibility of
calling for medical assistance in time - she must be helped by her friends and
family to the nearest taxi park for the same bumpy ride to the nearest clinic
or hospital.
This is one of the
realities of life for those living outside the capital cities of sub-Saharan
Africa. And the sense of isolation one
feels, people in towns being separated from one another with no easy means of
communicating contributes, I think, to a malaise that permeates the society,
undermining attempts by civic leaders to mobilise a community towards
self-improvement. Capacity building.
This is the impression I
get. And each time I again return after being away, and I watch the barefoot
women and children carrying water jugs on their heads as they walk along the
road leading from Entebbe airport, I am reminded that this is the problem. Keeping this in mind you may better
understand my passion for finding the best means to restoring effective
communications to such a community.
This is a case
study. I offer simple, practicable and
immediate solutions, based upon my experience:
Train the Trainer programmes, within the context of a developing country
community telecentre - using information and communications technologies (ICTs)
for capacity building through human resource development. I will try to show how, by a bottom-up
approach to solving the problem, with local
training programmes and innovative communications networks, a reproducible
model emerges.
I will describe how
Uganda Connect’s Train the Trainer programme works. It has worked for training hundreds at our workshops in Uganda’s
Ministry of Education headquarters, and how it has worked for training the trainers
for pilot Multipurpose Community Telecentres (MCTs), one at Nakaseke in Luwero
and another at Hoima, and also at the newly-opened micro-telecentre in the
remote village of Kihihi.
Multipurpose
Community Telecentres - Best Practice?
It struck me as
being close to the mark, the concept of the Multipurpose Community Telecentres
(MCTs), as an efficient means for meeting a community’s needs for human
resource development, through the provision of information and communication by
community-shared facilities. The MCT
concept was part of a strategy contained within the Buenos Aires Action Plan
(now superseded by the Valletta Action Plan {VAP}). All the right ingredients seemed to be there: enhancing
development of rural communities by providing access to telecommunications to
remote areas, and training the community at a shared facility, using ICTs, PCs,
modems, printers, fax, photocopier, scanner, etc, shared cross-sectorally.
But I questioned,
how much of a model would such a pilot project be if it were put together with
large aid agency or UN funding? I
wanted to find a sure-fire simple recipe that would make such a community
telecentre work - not just for a UN or international agency-sponsored project,
or expatriate non-governmental organization - one that could be started up from
scratch as a local community or NGO project, with the minimum of overheads,
cost of materials or level of expertise.
I reasoned that if
the small group of marginalized youth such as we chose to train from scratch to
be trainers at our Uganda Connect workshops could succeed in acquiring ICT
skills, with their minimal resources, to a level that would allow them to train
others, then we could offer our Train the Trainer programme as a model to just
about any project or community, no matter how poor. And if we could demonstrate a means by which such a project or
community, no matter how remote, could access information and communications,
especially through the Internet, by wireless technologies without dependence
upon the national telecommunications network, then even upcountry communities
could do the same.
We run our workshops on the cheap, using
recycled equipment. We start students,
most of whom have had no hands-on experience with a PC, with a typing course,
and then move them on to word processing, before introducing them to the
Internet, e-mail, and later the web. They may also learn how to compile
databases or do spreadsheets, according to each one's interest or predilection.
Trainers assist new students to get off the mark, but then let each work at
one’s own pace. Though the pace is relaxed, the atmosphere is stimulating.
We try to give everyone a chance. New
students are accepted only for a short introductory course, with no promise of
receiving any kind of certification, but simply the opportunity of getting
hands-on experience in exchange for a token fee, not much more than the
equivalent of a bottle of Coke for each half hour. Yet that fee helps pay the stipends for the volunteer trainers,
and ensures the sustainability of the programme. Many leave satisfied at having been given a good introduction to
information technology. Others catch
more of the vision and use their experience to start on a course to improve
their skills, or begin employment.
Some show a willingness to help with the programme, and begin to take a
hand with the other students, and from these are chosen new trainee trainers.
These trainee trainers, while acquiring basic computer communications skills
are gradually given increasing responsibility in running the centre, teaching
others early on, with what little they know, eventually enabling them to run
the centre themselves, with the minimal amount of supervision. Much of our
collaboration and management of the centre is done by e-mail. This continued supervision by e-mail is
crucial to its success.
Our first team of six volunteer trainee
trainers, who started training from scratch in March 1997, were themselves
overseeing the teaching of one hundred Ugandan students by the end of the year.
By contrast, some of our students who had attended computer courses at ICT
institutions in Kampala had rarely been given hands-on experience in former
institutions until after they had read and studied course materials - about
concepts that could only have made sense to them after they'd had some hands-on experience!
We did everything we could to minimise
overheads, to the end that we could make the training more accessible and also,
by our not being so overburdened with the cost of running the centre, we could provide
a more friendly and relaxed approach to learning the new technology. This was our slow approach or feeder lane to
the information highway.
Our own level of competence for teaching ICTs was low; most of our early team of volunteers were just learning the
basics. Yet it was Sun’s founder, John
Gage, who admitted he used only two or three percent of the popular office
suite software's capabilities! How many
of us use much more than that? And with
the ever-more intuitive programs, how long does it take one to acquire that
level of competence? Think about it.
South Africa’s President Mandela has said
that Universal Access was a means to 'promote economic growth and development,
consolidate democracy and human rights and increase the capacity of ordinary
people to participate in governance'.
Uganda Connect's volunteer trainee trainers programme was proving that
ordinary people were also the means
to that end!
Some of those chosen from marginalised
groups, when compared with local elites, demonstrated a superior ability to
adapt; their survival skills no doubt enabling them to adjust the more quickly
to the ever-changing environment of information technology; their seeming
weaknesses or disadvantage making them the more adept at grasping core concepts,
or of easily adding to their repertoire of skills; they have the less to
unlearn. They also make good
teachers. One of our volunteers who had
completed his studies at one of the better ICT institutions could not be
selected for our Train the Trainer programme because he was overqualified and
brought with him too many of the older teaching methods.[1]
We were glad accept
UNESCO’s invitation to participate in their pilot telecentre project Nakaseke
after some initial misgivings. We had
been dismayed, for instance, to learn that UNESCO/IDRC/ITU-sponsored telecentre
projects had planned to apportion so large an amount of its limited budget for
the purchase of new equipment, Pentium PCs, for instance, when most community
leaders who were to be trained had never used a PC before. And one of the managers was apparently
insisting upon the need for a new a 4x4 vehicle for the project, when, most of
the community it was meant to serve were taking their produce, coffee beans and
matoke (green bananas), to market by bicycle.
I draw conviction
from Thoreau's view, when he reproached those trying to make a living by
‘trying not to live by faith’,
senselessly making themselves sick, that they may lay up something against a sick
day. [2] His diatribe - written with another great
technological revolution in mind that was supposed to be speed the salvation of
mankind, and based upon his experiment at Walden Pond - would serve as a good
yardstick for any such development project.
He wisely observed that the cost
of a thing could be ‘measured by how much life he had to give for it, a
sensible rate of exchange by any standard.
Consequently, he was content to live simply and modestly, because he
believed that freedom meant learning to do without the trappings of a more
complicated life’.[3] Thoreau was providing innovators of the 19th
century with a reality check.
And it was to
ensure that the trade-off in costs for the new information technology did not
outweigh the benefits, improvements in the quality of life gained from using
it, that Uganda Connect proposed to streamline the methodology in our Train the
Trainer programme in Uganda. We begged
and borrowed, in obedience to the injunction, ‘It is difficult to begin without
borrowing, but perhaps it is the most generous course thus to permit your
fellow men to have an interest in your enterprise’.[4]
We scrounged older
PCs from European companies upgrading their computer networks. You don’t need a Pentium PC to learn touch
typing or the basics of word processing!
We bought the project’s first 4x4 truck at a military auction. By keeping capital expenditure and running
costs low we could concentrate on our main task, which was to Train the
Trainers. And by deliberately running the
project on a shoestring we were in a better position to approach local
officials to provide offices for our first training centre.
At an official
launch ceremony at Nakaseke, where our Ugandan trainers, unexpectedly called
upon to act as interpreters for visiting consultants, they demonstrated how
well suited they were for teaching the trainee trainers; they understood just
enough about ICT technology, not too
much about office suite software, knew the culture, spoke the local languages,
and had a vision for teaching others to teach others.
Adhere to the Train the Trainer Model
One of the local project managers for the
Nakaseke MCT had sent an e-mail asking us to propose a curriculum, but
suggesting that instead of training only the dozen or so trainers we’d
envisioned, we try to train as many as possible. One of our own managers responded by recommending we install a
public address system for the purpose.
I was adamant that we adhere to the Train the
Trainer concept:
‘I would like to
encourage the Nakaseke MCT committee members to stick with our original idea of
training the trainers at Nakaseke.
The idea being that those so trained may then, in turn, train colleagues within
the community. This is reproducible and
sustainable, and should make the Nakaseke MCT a good model as a pilot project.
‘For instance, you
train one trainer, chosen from the local clinic or
hospital, another
from the local school, one from the farming community,
another from the LC,
and one from the local business community, and so on,
each of whom has been
chosen, based upon his or her having demonstrated both an aptitude and an
inclination to learn with the idea of teaching others.
‘Ideally in each case
you will be looking for someone with what one could call
a martyr spirit, that
is someone endowed with a special grace to be a
servant to others, to
give of herself or himself sacrificially, with a hope to
improving local
conditions, with a do or die vision; someone who may wish to lead colleagues
from the local community out of the backwardness of inefficient food
production, say, or educational methods, but by example, the kind of person you
might see picking up the piece of rubbish lying on the ground - as opposed to
the others who walked past it, or who would take the
initiative to perform
some other lowly task without having to be asked.
These are the ones we
should be looking to train.
‘And this is the gist
of the Train the Trainer concept, and we must adhere
to it rigorously if
the pilot MCT is to be reproducible. You'll always have the
many to be trained,
but the key to finding a solution is to train the
trainers. Our motto
has been to 'keep it small, keep it pure, keep it
strong; then let it
double'. Though it might seem insignificant at the
first, (if you get it
right) it begins to multiply of its own.
‘Once you have begun
to train a cadre, one [or two] person[s] each from the various sectors
represented at Nakaseke, they in turn, organize the training of
their colleagues. A
nurse from the clinic might, for instance, arrange for
one evening session a
week at the telecentre when as many of her or his
colleagues, doctors,
nurses, aids and administrators, could be taught, by
hands-on experience,
the basics of information and communications
technology. Such
sessions could begin early on in their own training, and
might be given with a
minimum of oversight by those who trained them, in
this case, by Uganda
Connect trainers. Their colleagues could then sign a
roster for follow up
hands-on exercise at the telecentre, at each one's
convenience, in
between those sessions.
‘By this means each
team of trainers, starting with the Uganda Connect team,
will be enabled to
spend as much time as is necessary to oversee those
few who are being
trained to train. I'm quite sure that this is the way
ahead for the urgent
need for capacity building.
‘The community might
benefit from having the occasional general meeting at
the telecentre, such
as the one we had earlier this year at Nakaseke when we brought our
communications truck, together with the WFP truck, at which community leaders
could include presentations from some of their own MCT trainers, so as to bring
the community up to date with a progress report and for general sensitisation.’
I was given opportunity to correct another misapprehension
by an oblique comment about the training programme, ‘within the framework of
Uganda Connectivity Project competence.’
‘I had to chuckle to myself when
I read your remark about the level of
competence. It is precisely that
level of competence which is required,
trainee-trainers - or trainer-trainees, however you prefer - who still
possess the remembrance of new-found skills and how they acquired them, that
enables them to so effectively teach others; not, as one might suppose, the
more highly trained elites you will find in ICT institutions scattered
around Kampala. And it will be by their example, as being so newly trained
and relatively unqualified themselves, that they will inspire confidence in
their trainees to soon begin to train others, however low their level of
competence.’
And thus it was that by e-mail we were able
to collaborate with our colleagues both with the Nakaseke MCT committees (our
e-mail printouts were posted on the bulletin boards at Nakaseke), project
managers and with our Uganda Connect team who would be responsible for the
training programme. This is also
reproducible. We were not bound to be
in any particular geographical location, but by using the Internet, could
continue with our collaboration unhindered by the expense of travelling.
Nakaseke MCT Train the Trainer Curriculum
Here is the general weekly curriculum agreed
upon, though our e-mail collaboration, for the initial two-month training
programme at the Nakaseke MCT:
Weeks
One and Two:
Introduction to ICT - including a
description of computer hardware and peripherals
typing - starting with home row, and
typing exercises, Mavis Beacon
word processing - introductory
tutorial (Lotus AmiPro), using templates,
basic fonts, bold, italics, underline, printing out a document, MS Word
basic Windows conventions - copy and
paste, cut and paste, undo, sizing of
windows, dialogue boxes, help menus
Windows Explorer - finding one's way
around the hard disk, formatting
floppies, copying disks, copying/moving files, protecting floppies,
naming and saving files to floppy disk, organizing files, making
directories
accessories - calculator, paint
Weeks Three and Four:
typing - learning additional rows,
improving speed, accuracy
word processing - introduce
additional fonts, paragraph styles, templates,
view size, printing envelopes/labels, MS Word
e-mail - introduction, basics,
compose, send and receive, forward, address
book, MS Outlook Express
Weeks Five and Six:
word processing - review of basic
skills, introduce tables, indents, new
templates, MS Word
e-mail - introduce attachments,
sending, opening, MS Outlook Express
utilities - introduce compression,
WinZip
web browsing - basics, URLs, back
button, search engines, saving, copy and
paste, MS Internet Explorer or Netscape Navigator
spreadsheets - introduction, Lotus
1-2-3 tutorial, MS Excel
database - introduction, Access,
(CDS/ISIS to be taught by UNESCO team)
Weeks Seven and Eight:
word processing - revision, tables,
add to repertoire of skills, thesaurus,
grammar, MS Word
e-mail - review attachments, sending
and opening, address book, groups, MS
Outlook Express
spreadsheets - create and print a
spreadsheet, MS Excel
web browsing - options, home page,
introduction to html, WYSIWYG web editing, MS Internet Explorer or Netscape
Navigator
utilities - anti-virus, Scandisk
graphics - Paint Shop Pro (or other
similar program) and/or scanning
software, HP
presentation graphics - MS
PowerPoint
Our Train the Trainers scheme also envisages
new centres being set up by trainees, modelled after our pilot centre, so that
trainees who have acquired management and communications skills, learned how to
work collaboratively with their colleagues, teachers and students, using the
Internet for sending their reports, finding information, as we are now doing -
skills which will make them eminently qualified for employment in the dawning
information age - may go on to start their own centres, thus creating employment, for themselves and
others.
While trainers were taking turns going out to Nakaseke each week for the eight-week training programme, those remaining at our Kampala workshops continued with their work training trainers, some of whom had travelled to Kampala from distant parts.
Our trainee from Hoima had been sent to get
training in preparation for setting up a telecentre for the Bunyoro-Kitara
Kingdom Youth Foundation. Community
leaders from Hoima who had learned of the Nakaseke telecentre project and
contacted UNESCO, had been referred to our workshops. He had been reporting his progress back to Hoima, and after some
months we received an invitation from local leaders to help them to establish a
telecentre there.
Following a couple of visits to Hoima to
discuss the project, during which we had successfully connected to the Internet
and browsed the web for an hour, we decided to help set up the telecentre by
donating three Pentium PCs and providing an additional three PCs on free-loan,
together with printers, and other peripherals, modems and an Iomega Zip
drive. (We’d just sent by airfreight a
shipment of 21 recycled Pentium PCs donated by one of our sponsors.) We set out on our expedition at the
beginning of May, the new telecentre manager, together with other members of
our team, driving up to Hoima with a couple of 4x4 trucks loaded with the
equipment.
News of the opening of the telecentre was
received with great enthusiasm both by the local community and even nationally.
On World Telecommunications Day, the 17th
of May 1999 the new telecentre was opened.
Church leaders had blessed the occasion the day before at Hoima
Cathedral, where telecommunications officials from all 39 districts in Uganda
had gathered, and during the next week the telecentre was visited by a number
of officials including the Prime Minister for the King of Bunyoro-Kitara and
the Resident District Commissioner, representing the President. The following Sunday Uganda Television
filmed the telecentre for a news spot which was broadcast nationally. President Museveni also publicly applauded
the launch of the new centre.
dstern@uconnect.org
[1] Upcountry HF E-Mail Network As an Early Component of a Developing Country's Information Infrastructure, by Daniel Stern, presented at Telecom98 Strategies Forum, Johannesburg
[2] ‘It is evident what mean and sneaking lives many of you live, for my sight has been whetted by experience; always on the limits, trying to get into business and trying to get out of debt …; always promising to pay, promising to pay, tomorrow, and dying today, insolvent; seeking to curry favor, to get custom, by how many modes, only not state-prison offences; lying, flattering, voting, contracting yourselves into a nutshell of civility, or dilating into an atmosphere of thin and vaporous generosity, that you may persuade your neighbor to let you make his shoes, or his hat, or his coat, or his carriage, or import his groceries for him; making yourselves sick, that you may lay up something against a sick day, something to be tucked away in an old chest, or in a stocking behind the plastering, or, more safely, in the brick bank; no matter where, no matter how much or how little’From Henry David Thoreau, Walden, first published by Ticknor and Fields 1854, reprinted by Penguin Classics 1986, pp 49
[3] From Introduction to Walden, by Michael Meyer, Penguin Classics 1986
[4] From Henry David Thoreau, Walden, first published by Ticknor and Fields 1854, reprinted by Penguin Classics 1986 pp 83