A meeting in Singapur: Global Curriculum Development Workshop (June 2009).

[Marta Mans]

From 2 to 5th of June, the Global Curriculum Development Workshop was held in Singapore, and was attended by representatives of different world organizations participating in the Global telecentre.org Academy (GTA). GTA is a project lead by Telecentre.org and created to provide support and training to people working in ICT centers around the world.

The main outcome of the workshop was the development of the curriculum for a telecentre’s operator or dinamizator. It is expected to be implemented in an online common training platform available in 11 languages.

I had the opportunity to participate on behalf of the Esplai Foundation, and share this project building with the representatives of the other 11 countries.

The meeting in Singapore means a step forward in achieving the Global Academy despite the wide variety of models of telecentres around the world, the variety of missions and the different languages of the participants. Even having all those complex issues, a consensus was possible to reach to advance in the establishment of a common framework.
It is planned to develop the first pilot course at the beginning of 2010, and we are making a big effort now to improve the certification strategy and the governance.

In addition to the value offered by the training itself and the certification strategy as a step in the professionalization of the telecentre operator, It also opens the possibilities to exchange, with other countries, knowledge of other situations, experiences and processes (like specific training on such communication, business and sustainability plan, a specific course on how to assemble a radio, processes health ICT ...) ... and it is also valuable regarding meeting people who is working under the same objectives and mission. It opens to the possibility of develop some specific content for the global course and to share in the same platform.

For my part has been a rewarding experience that has brought a lot of challenging work and has proved very interesting contrasts between the different group of people and their realities.

Is very necesary to develop all the support for all the people who is working in a community ICT because they have an important work to do and is not easy sometimes.Through them, it will be posible to start many local inclusion processes. Now we have the opportunity to share and profit some experiences that are already working succesfully and open them to all the telecentres in the world.