Name: Basheerhamad Shadrach
Publish Date: 01 March 2010
Designation & Organisation: telecentre.org
Location:

Basheerhamad Shadrach, popularly known as Shaddy, is the Executive Director of the recently launched telecentre.org Foundation. Before accepting this position, he was the Lead, telecentre.org Academy, one of the crucial pillars of the telecentre.org programme, focusing on the capacity building of grassroots knowledge workers. He has been instrumental in establishing the telecentre.org Academy and its regional/national branches by bringing together telecentre stakeholders from around the world. He has been particularly successful in garnering support for the Academy from reputed Open and Distance Learning Universities globally. Shaddy has served several organisations in South Asia and Europe in senior positions since 1986. After joining the Foundation, Shaddy, for the first time, shares his vision for the Foundation, the challenges lying ahead and the strategies to overcome them.  

Congratulations for being appointed as the Executive Director, telecentre.org Foundation. In your opinion, to what extent, would the telecentre.org Foundation be different from its predecessor telecentre.org 1.0? Kindly elaborate the major changes.

telecentre.org foundation would benefit from all the good things of 1.0 and the traction it has created. As traditional funders, IDRC and other social investors' role was to strengthen the ecosystem rather than advocating for the telecentres. telecentre.org Foundation would advocate for the need to invest in creating the public spaces that offer knowledge connectivity, opportunities, skills, and pro poor public and private services to the citizens. All this would require a lot of canvassing in different countries. The second change would be that while 1.0 was driven by IDRC as a programme for the three social investors, although with greater assistance from the national networks. It was a programme with certain levels of expectations laid down along business lines. But the expectation for the Foundation would be   to make it more participatory, broad based and project it as an organisation that listens to the voices from the ground.

In the case of the Foundation, we are starting at a stage where the telecentre relevance is only partially questioned and that too in the light of the new tools and technologies, such as mobile phones and other gadgets. We have a situation where the telecentres are accepted, they are growing and they are interlinked with the national egovernance plans of various governments. If at all, we are questioned, we are questioned about our effectiveness in aligning with the governments and the public and private service functionaries for taking egovernance and other public private services to the doorsteps of the community. It is here that we have to invent our roles regarding what the Foundation would do. So, I see advocacy as one major role, the second being making it more participatory as an organisation in terms of programme priorities, and the third one is to ensure that we continues to find the value add of telecentre.org and offer it by working along side with private sector organisations. The Foundation would be different in these three areas.

Which are the areas where telecentre.org Foundation would like to ensure continuity of its predecessor's commitments?

The areas where we would like to ensure continuity is definitely networking. We have been successful in introducing telecentre.org in 70 countries around the world. We take pride in acknowledging that in 15 countries, we have fulfilled the function of building very strong telecentre networks. We would like to continue the journey to ensure that all the 70 countries including the new ones have robust, vibrant and highly successful telecentre networks with multi-stakeholder membership that have the ability to form common consensus and policy level recommendations in order to make certain that the telecentre world is well understood by different stakeholders.

Secondly, we would like to ensure the continuity of telecentre.org 1.0 knowledge sharing, although it wasn't done well enough in the initial stage. But, of late, through the various social networking tools and low cost technological means, it has facilitated knowledge exchange among telecentre stakeholders in various countries, at least in four major languages, like Arabic, Spanish, English and French. The Foundation would continue it, but our aspiration would be to expand this into many more languages and also deepen this dialogue to include the telecentre operators. In the second phase, we want to introduce basically knowledge sharing practices among telecentre operators. The third important domain is the telecentre.org Academy. We have begun the process of establishing  telecentre.org Academy, the global Secretariat, the Curriculum Commons, the National Academies, the Consortium of Universities, the Certification Scheme, the Learners' Support System, and using the appropriate technology for facilitating online learning. We would like to continue this in the next phase. It is expected that the first online course would be introduced by June 2010.

Now that the telecentre.org Foundation has been shifted to a new region, how would it impact the telecentre movement across the world?

With the establishment of the telecentre.org Foundation, telecentre.org has moved its core functions to the Philippines with a small team lending support both from administrative and technical point of view. The Foundation itself would employ staff members from around the world. To begin with, the Academy staff would be positioned in India; regional network leaders would be engaged as network coordinators from each of the regions we are working in now. We would have Editors of different language sites again based in different parts of the world, not in Manila. We also hope to attract one or two Programme Managers for the Foundation from other parts of the world. Likewise, the telecentre magazine Editor would be based at Delhi through partnership with CSDMS. 

We have established the International Advisory Council (IAC) that supports the programmatic work of telecentre.org Foundation. The IAC consists of people from around the world with regional and thematic expertise. So, these few building blocks would make sure that the Foundation is global; it is not Asian. The Asian telecentre field is already growing and the growth itself takes care of a number of challenges. But, Africa, the new Soviet Union block, the Latin American region, parts of North America and Europe are the regions where we need to do a lot of work in terms of expanding the network as well as instilling confidence among the decision makers to look at telecentres as a field for developing the social enterprise in their region.            
                                      
What is your vision for telecentre.org Foundation? What could be the major challenges to the  Foundation that you foresee in the future and what solutions do you suggest?

The vision for the telecentre.org Foundation is that of a participatory and broad-based organisation that communicates about the importance of telecentres, not so much in the form of the tools and gadgets based at the telecentres, but in the form of the people and the network of people that support the grassroots knowledge movement in terms of not only spreading knowledge, but making sure that it is put to use in every context. So, its a people based vision where the people act as intermediaries connecting the demand to the source. Again, the demand is generated not only from the remote communities, but also from the government. Many times, the government and the private sector organisations do not know what the people want. They do not get enough feedback on people's response to services offered to them, be it services pledged by the government or those pushed and sold at a fee by the private sector. So, here the demand for market intelligence is from the other side. So, basically the vision is to connect the demand with the source using intermediaries, who are well capacitated, global grassroots knowledge practitioners.
The challenges that the telecentre.org Foundation would face in the future are multiple:

We have to ensure that the Foundation is driven and steered at the same pace and with the same passion and vision as telecentre.org 1.0. The challenge would also include broadening the partnership. Presently, the three social investors are IDRC, Microsoft and CICT. It would include other private sector players, like  Intel, CISCO, Qualcomm and others as well as a number of national governments. It would also like to embrace a lot of financial institutions and micro business organisations. The second challenge would be to ensure the vision and mission of telecentre.org Academy is realised and intertwined with telecentre.org Foundation strategy so that it is seen as its part, not as a totally independent agency.

The third challenge that the Foundation would face would be practising a new working culture. The Foundation could very well be a virtual organisation with a team contributing from across the world, but committed to the common cause. We are basically talking about a participatory movement with many organisations involved with the Foundation in implementing its programmes. We have to ensure that everyone sings in chorus.     
            
How is the Foundation going to deal with major challenges of telecentre movement, such as lack of skilled human resources, financial viability of telecentre, connectivity and so on? How would the new set up cope with old and new challenges of telecentre movement across the world?

The challenges mentioned here are rightly identified, although the telecentre.org Foundation has a firm footing. But, the Foundation also starts at a time when, as you have mentioned, there are not many skilled human resources available to  staff the telecentres; financial viability of telecentres is a major challenge; there are connectivity problems in various parts of the world; there is absence of the right regulations; and competitive mechanisms are highly poor. Even the content and services are not highly mature.

The telecentre.org Foundation would need to turn these challenges into opportunities. It would need to develop strategies to advocate for the right regulatory frameworks that would enable telecom players to strengthen the telecommunication infrastructure in a particular country. The Foundation should also think of partnering with private and public players in developing pro poor services. These are happening in many parts of the world, but certain regions still lack it for various reasons that we are already aware of. Again, through the telecentre.org Academy, the Foundation should aim towards bringing more and more skilled manpower into the telecentre world. The Foundation would need to come up with various solutions to sustain the telecentre movement from remote parts of Africa that have only a handful of telecentres to India that has started the process of establishing approximately 240,000 telecentres. So, there is a need to develop different strategies to address different situations and continue to add value.

What are the salient features of telecentre.org Foundation's business strategy since it would play a significant role in determining its future course of action? Could you explain it for the telecentre magazine audience in detail?

The business strategy plays an important role in determining the course of future action. That is the reason why we are not finalising the business plan ourselves. Rather, we are asking for contributions from the IAC, the Board of Trustees and the larger membership, particularly our partners in other countries to contribute to the strategies. We began with a consultative process that encouraged our stakeholders to highlight the priorities for the next five years. We learnt a lot and we have also aggregated the voices from the ground that categorically mentioned a number of new business lines.

The business strategy would be completed by June 2010 and by that time, we would have completed consultations with all our partners and stakeholders, both for policy level as well as on the ground or grassroots level practices. Here, I am highlighting a few new features that would be included in the business strategy:

a) The first would be the role of advocacy - The Foundation would serve as an activist and advocate for  telecentres all over the world. To realise this, it would need  enough investment and the right mix of communication strategy that is in alignment with the overall business strategy.

b) The next would be to support the private sector in their pursuit to reach out to the  next billion with affordable, accessible, robust, pro poor and reliable private and public services that poor people across the world could afford to access.

How do you perceive the role of the Foundation in the emerging Information Society/ Economy?

This is a very important question and several nations are grappling with it - how could one have an inclusive knowledge society and economy, where every member feels proud of contributing to the larger economy. This requires not only the strategies to enable the development of an inclusive society, but also implementable action lines, such as developing skills of the people to contribute to the society and developing the backbone or the infrastructure that facilitates such contributions by them.

It also requires ensuring that it becomes a two-way street rather than one way, so that the remote and poor communities do not end up becoming only the consumers. They should also be seen as contributors to the larger system. This would need not just strategies or the  Planning Commission in different nations thinking in an idealistic manner, but actors, such as the private sector players, the state level actors, the, regulators, the social entrepreneurs and the social enterprise, who need to implement the broad based inclusive economic structure.

We need to ensure that the Foundation constantly highlights the role of the telecentres and the intermediaries and their relevance in creating an equitable and more inclusive information or knowledge society that has the potential to contribute to an inclusive economy. They should be seen as interlocutors to reap the benefit that the rural communities could bring to the larger economy.

We would like to have your opinion on the telecentre magazine. How do you foresee the role and responsibilities of the magazine as a knowledge sharing tool and in strengthening the telecentre movement across the world in the future? 

The telecentre magazine has already been identified as an important tool in communicating and sharing knowledge about the telecentre world by not only highlighting the best practices, but also the process behind each of those outstanding examples across the world. It could be a national telecentre movement or a grassroots story that emerges from a particular corner of the world or even one of those 1000 ideas that triggers options for the sustainability of a particular telecentre or even, of late, the south to south exchange feature of the magazine that highlights the importance of learning among the peers or learning from one another. The magazine is an important tool and this partnership with CSDMS underlines the ethos of the Foundation that does not believe in doing everything on its own, but in partnership with organisations that have significant contributions to make. So, in the context of the Foundation with its new business lines,  new strategies, particularly as an advocate and activist for  the telecentre movement, the magazine should play an important role in reaching the right people at the right time. Particularly when a particular issue or debate is hot, the magazine should be there carrying an article that takes up the issue.

So, in that context, the magazine would need to be seen as a tool for strengthening the telecentre movement across the world. We would be particularly interested in looking at its dissemination strategy, because it has a lot of interesting and important elements to contribute and communicate. But if the tool is not placed at the right time in the hands of the person looking for it, the purpose would not be solved. We need to ensure that it is printed in large numbers, translated in as many languages as possible and the stories are recycled and reused and promoted at the right time, so that the telecentre stakeholders benefit from the articles carried in the magazine. It also serves as a knowledge sharing tool for people to learn and put to use certain practices, specially those carried by the 1000 ideas and the south to south exchange sections.