Report Back on the CLIQ research meeting

On the 15th and 16th of May i attended the Stakeholders meeting of the "Community-based Learning, ICTs and Quality-of-life (CLIQ): A participatory approach to assessing the impact of ICT access on quality-of-life in KwaZulu-Natal".

The research project is very relevant and timely - we know ICT's make an impact on peoples lives, but we have no research to demonstrate how much and under what circumstances ICTs impact on the quality of people's lives as they define it.

The overall goal of CLIQ is to conclude whether or not access to ICT (after needs-based training) can improve the well-being of poorer people as defined by them.

In addition, CLIQ goals are to:

• Facilitate the identification of information and communication needs among selected participants in poorer communities and identify training that can assist in the fulfilment of these needs in order to improve participants' lives
• Improve the lives of participants through improving their access to, and use of, ICTs in ways that they feel will improve their quality of life
• Measure and research the changes to participants lives, in order to conclude and share findings and policy implications for the provision of ICT training and access which improves people's lives.
• Build the capacity of telecentres and their staff in evaluating the impact of their ICT training initiatives through their direct involvement in the project

At the stakholder meeting, I did a presentation of our Needs based training approach. Other participants gave some really interesting and useful presentations of their work - especially those working in telecentres and MPCC in KZN.

What was interesting what that two telecentres had very different gender experiences - one had hardly any women using their centre and the other had majority women. Seemed like the reasons for this was in approach, community context and content of training offered. One of the four telecentres represented was very well resourced in terms of skills and infrastructure, while others faced numerous challenges. Those that do well, of course, are community initiatives and have links with active NGOs- those that do not do so well, are those set up in more or less isolation (site identified by USAASA)

USAASA were there, but I was very dissapointed in the lack of transparency of their approaches and it seems, a lack of progress in coming up with a defninition of Universal service, and a corresponding workplan.

Some interesting points from presentations:

- In Sicabazini Telecentre: there is high levels of poverty and unemployment. In general, the communicy os over-reseached - Dumisani Malwane (who is the Chair of the NPO that manage the centre) says they suffer from "Phd Syndrome" where they are studied, but never see the results of benefit from the research done. He said that many development projects fail in the area because they are not coheran. The centre has 2 trainers, an Internet Kiosk and ten computers. The centre is used mostly by boys. They use the Vuvuzela Kiosk - which is a franchise and works on a voucher system.

- Adam's Mission: they have ten computers and are part of the oldest mission in South Africa. They service 4 groups of people - UNISA students, unemployed youth, and ABET learners. Men and women visit the centre, but more women are part of the ABET and unemployed youth users. The administrator of the centre, Nonhlanhla Gema, said that eye sight among older users is a significant problem in using the computers.

- Inanda: they are urban basedand USAASA funded. They seem very impressive in the range of services they offer. Nozipho Mbatha is the manager and told us about their services - they are open 7 days a week, and include a free day every friday for women only to encourage women to use the centre. She says there has been a big increase in NGOs and SME's using the centre. They have 3focal areas - telecoms services, basic ICT skills, events and programmes to promote ICTs.Nozipho said that their fridays are hectic! She said they have a balance of men and women. On affordability and sustainability - she said they are doing what USAASA should be doing to give access to communities - and this means that they have to keep their services affodable and still sustain themselves. A hard job!

Im looking forward to participating in the content of the training that will be offered, and in the results.