History

Telecentres first started appearing in Europe and North America in the mid-1980s. Since then, the telecentre movement has grown quickly and spread to almost every corner of the world. There have been no marketing campaigns to make it grow, and no big organization to "manage" its expansion. Instead, the movement has been fueled by the power of its ideas, values, and relevance — by different people asking the same basic question: "How can my community participate in and benefit from the social and economic opportunities associated with the information age?"

The answer: a common meeting place where people can be exposed to the tools, skills, attitudes, and values of information and network technologies. A telecentre. (Or telecottage, community technology centre, community multimedia centre, etc. Telecentres go by many different names.)

telecentre.org emerged in the same way — organically and from many different places. People within the movement realized that past investments had focused too narrowly on infrastructure: computers, Internet access, software, electricity. They called for more resources to be dedicated to networks that supported the work of telecentres on the ground. They emphasized the need to build the skills of telecentre managers, to develop more and better back-end services, to connect people and facilitate sharing and collaboration, and to create high-value content and services to offer through telecentres.

A consortium of organizations responded to the movement's call. From 2002 to 2005, IDRC, UNESCO, IICD, SDC, and Microsoft convened meetings, workshops, and consultations, which were attended by over 700 grassroots telecentre leaders. They also conducted extensive research into both telecentre needs and the state of the telecentre movement. They learned that many key pieces of the "telecentre ecosystem" are missing or weak:

• People who manage or work in telecentres often feel isolated. As social entrepreneurs, they want to connect with others to share ideas, find solutions, and develop their skills.

• There are large numbers of local telecentres, but few organizations that provide the back-end business or technical support services that needed for them to succeed.

• There is no efficient "social supply chain" to provide telecentres with the hardware, software, and other products needed to operate successfully.

• There is a need for more organizations dedicated to developing services and content that telecentres can offer to people in the communities they serve.

This process pointed to the need for a global support network with a mandate to improve telecentre capacity and sustainability locally while at the same time strengthening the global telecentre ecosystem. The underlying approach: invest in networks and back-end service providers in order to develop a richer ecosystem where a diversity of interconnected players help each other succeed.

With support from IDRC, Microsoft, and SDC, the telecentre.org social investment program was officially launched in November 2005 at the World Summit on the Information Society in Tunis. The program provides grants and technical assistance to telecentre networks around the world. It is currently hosted and implemented by IDRC, although key functions are increasingly carried out by partners around the world. (Download our business plan, last updated in May 2006.)

But telecentre.org is much bigger than just a social investment program. We're a community that gathers people and organizations from around the world who believe that telecentres have an important role to play in development. We're activists, telecentre managers, network leaders, nonprofit and civil-society organizations, corporations, governments, and international development agencies — all working together to increase the social and economic impact of grassroots telecentres around the word. And we'd like you to join us.

Learn more

• Download the telecentre.org business plan (PDF)
• Little Engines That Did: case histories from the global telecentre movement has great stories about telecentre pioneers' experiences and learning
• From the Ground Up: the evolution of the telecentre movement explains how telecentres have evolved and contribute to social and economic development