digitalLEARNING-Mar-2011-[12-13]-Empower ing Regional-Prof V N Rajasekharan Pillai

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LEADER SPEAK

Telecentre Initiative of IGNOU

Empowering Regional Youth through ICT Prof V N Rajasekharan Pillai, Vice Chancellor, Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU), in conversation with Dr Rajeshree Dutta Kumar and Ankita Verma, speaks about the Telecentre initiative at IGNOU and its potential impact.

Prof V N Rajasekharan Pillai Vice Chancellor, Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU)

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www.digitalLEARNING.in

What was the idea behind the decision of bringing in the entire telecentre initiative to IGNOU? For the grassroot development, Information Communication Technology is going to make a great impact. The National e-Governance Plan is strengthening the grassroot level organisations and technology is the major thrust for it. Department of IT (GoI) is also planning IT Literacy Mission. A committee has been constituted to define what IT literacy is and how ordinary people can become IT literate so that they can avail primarily government to citizen services, and also, how these rural centres can be equipped with broadband connectivity and radio services in the future. Government to citizen services is happening to some extent in a fractured way. Once IT kiosk centres come into place in each and every village of the country, there can also be units for promoting education, knowledge and skills. That led us to the collaboration with the International Telecentre Academy and develop programme for Telecentre Management. For this we had meetings with various telecentre movements which were supported by IDRC. So with the help of international expert committee we have developed a curriculum for training the telecentre managers who are grassroot level workers and who may not have formal qualification. They may be school dropouts, social activists, representatives of certain civil society organizations or NGOs. Looking at the diversity of such people who could be the potential managers of these telecentres, they would work with the agricultural workers, local traders, and different grass-


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