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Klauss Stoll
Fundacion Chasquinet,
Quito, Ecuador |
First Class Communication
What struck me at the beginning of the ICT's was not so much the technology itself, but the potential of the new technologies, basically what could be with it. Boundaries of communication that seemed as durable as the Chinese Wall suddenly disappeared into nothing. I am not that old but I remember when I was a teenager a call from Europe to relatives in the United States was a very rare and costly affair, suddenly it all changed, we could talk to each others, exchange ideas in seconds and more important cheap. I was not alone anymore and I could work together with people that where far out of my reach before.
First Class Education
Many people forget one most important aspect of working in ICT4D: Whatever we did we had to make the way it worked up according to our thoughts because nobody had done something like this before. We had to make it up and we learned by doing, we made horrible mistakes; we often got it right and moved on to something new and better on this mixture of failure and success, I think we had one of the most privileged and First Class education in the world; Learning by Doing.
First Class Fellow Travelers
I don’t want to make a big point out of it, just look around at the people in your office and at ICT4D meetings. With very view exceptions they are all First Class People and it is a privilege to know and work with them.
First Class Pay
Today I am the President of Fundacion Chasquineta not for profit foundation in Latin America and still I just earn enough to make some ends meet but I consider myself as one of the best paid people around. Can you imagine the job satisfaction you get when you see whole communities develop out of nothing into relative prosperity and you know you and your organization had their little part in it? I consider this First Class Pay.
I could write a very long book about this but what are my main lessons learned from this 20 years of first Class ICT4D journey. I could write a very long book about this, so here only my main points.
Only bottom up works. Seeing hundreds of ICT4D projects come and go the main lesson learned is that only ICT4D projects that are developed and implemented with the fullest participation of the communities involved will succeed and have real impact. Top down projects that assume what best for the communities involved often serves only the institutional needs of the implementing organizations and in the end do more harm then good.
There are solutions; we only have to find them. ICT4D was and is facing many problems that seem insurmountable, problems like sustainability of Telecenter and ICT4D projects and rural connectivity. We found solutions to the problems above in real sustainability models that reflect and respect realities on the ground and the implementation of Wi-Fi and come time and with a lot of effort we will face the other problems, we don’t need to be afraid.
Partnership, Partnership, Partnership! For ICT4D having an impact all efforts in this area should be undertaken on the basis of multi sector partnerships of all stakeholders involved. Each sector has his talents, roles and responsibilities and when these brought in into ICT4D partnerships that respects the other stakeholders needs and abilities, these partnerships show results that go much further then the efforts of one sector alone.
I have a lot of thoughts about where ICT4D might be heading in the future but one of my main fears is more basic as I feel that we start to forget how to build a plane. Therefore, I am proposing since many years the following project concept of a ICT4D Senior Thinkers Council.
The new Information and Communication Technologies (ICT’s) have now come to age and with them many of those women and men who have been decisive in shaping this new world of global communications. Many of those “pioneers” have in recent years come to the end of their acting working life’s, and although they are perfectly willing and able to further contribute their vital experiences, contacts, knowledge their wisdom and valuable contributions have been lost because the mechanisms for passing on knowledge are not in place, resulting in financial and operational waste.
This process is in particular damaging for the area of ICT4D. ICT’s are a new factor in the common human experience and the use of ICT’s can often not draw on long established knowledge and methodologies, but only on newly acquired experiences, often obtained based on a process of trial and error, and which have not found their way yet into the main established knowledge sharing mechanisms such as Universities and vocational training.
The proposal to address this problem is to create multi- disciplinary global advisory team, based on senior personalities with many years of experience in ICT4D, called the ICT4D Seniors Council. The Seniors Councils main functions would be threefold:
1. Training:
Passing on of experiences and knowledge to young and middle aged ICT4D practitioners in open workshops.
2. Assistance:
a) On-line assistance for ICT4D projects (the whole spectrum from project application to evaluation) and, program monitoring capacities.
b) Hands on, acting as “jump teams” that are created on a demand base to act as hands on assistance for ICT4D projects planed and under way.
3. Acting as a Think-Tank:
The Seniors Council should act as a Think-Tank drawing on the unique experiences of its members make recommendations and to seek answers to the challenges ICT’s represent to all aspects of modern life.
For example: People today are getting older and less and less people are working to support those on pensions and medial assistance. Many social security systems are facing collapse. ICT’s role is not only to include aged people in the society as a whole, but ICT’s will sooner or later will have to play a vital role to create and introduce systems that enable seniors to participate in the working world longer then they do now. The Seniors Council can have a vital role to conceive and create these important instruments and tools.
For example: People today are getting older and less and less people are working to support those on pensions and medial assistance. Many social security systems are facing collapse. ICT’s role is not only to include aged people in the society as a whole, but ICT’s will sooner or later will have to play a vital role to create and introduce systems that enable seniors to participate in the working world longer then they do now. The Seniors Council can have a vital role to conceive and create these important instruments and tools.
