Academy

The telecentre.org Academy is a global initiative to provide telecentre managers with ongoing training, capacity building, and professional development opportunities. Structured as a consortium of national academies and partners with a small global support unit, the Academy supports and coordinates training programs, promotes the collaborative development and sharing of resources, and maintains accreditation and certification standards.

The Academy's goal is to ensure that telecentre managers have the necessary skills and support to excel in their day-to-day work. National academies in Spain, Colombia, and the Philippines have already been established, to be followed by Peru, Chile, Brazil, Sudan, Egypt, India, and Mozambique by the end of 2008. Together, we aim to train one million people by 2012.

At the global level, the telecentre.org Academy will:

• Establish national academies, in partnership with academic institutions, government, NGOs, and the private sector, and provide support for business and sustainability planning
• Set standards to accredit national academies and develop a certification scheme that recognizes telecentre managers' training achievements and skills gained through work experience; promote accreditation and certification using a brand or seal that symbolizes high-quality training and skills
• Support the development of open curricula and promote the creation, coordination, and improvement of common resources
  
• Facilitate events, networking, and knowledge sharing activities, including engaging the community to contribute to a shared, multilingual repository based on UNESCO's Open Training Platform (to include curricula, certification standards, best practices, models, list of experts, etc.)
• Develop a web-based learning management system
  
• Develop partnerships to secure additional resources and support
• Reach out to governments and donors supporting telecentres to help them incorporate continuous and sustainable capacity building into their program design

At the national or regional level, each academy will localize materials, deliver training, and link managers to ongoing mentoring and coaching opportunities. The telecentre.org Academy is a participatory initiative. National academies come together to determine the direction and activities of the global support unit.

How can you get involved?

• Everyone — Join the telecentre.org Academy group. Help professionalize, motivate, and support the one million telecentre knowledge workers in the making. Contribute training materials to the Open Training Platform.
• National networks — Set up your own national academy. telecentre.org can help you establish a national-level training system for telecentre workers. Use, localize, or build on on telecentre.org's Curriculum Commons resources.
• Training organizations — Collaborate with national networks. Use a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike license so that nonprofits and social enterprises can adapt and localize your training resources.
• Technology companies & donor organizations — Become Academy partners. Share your technical knowledge and expertise. Integrate training into your programs.
  

Learn more

• Curriculum Commons grant winners announced
• Curriculum Commons to build capacity of telecentre operators
• telecentre.org Academy: First steps around the world
• telecentre.org joins UNESCO's Open Training Platform
• Philippines launches national academy to train telecentre managers
• telecentre.org Academy: First steps in Latin America
• Telecentre Magazine: After Spain, Colombia is all set to launch a telecentre academy of its own