Building sustainability

[telecentre.org]

In a world that keeps changing by the minute, where ICTs are in the core of the changes, telecentres need to stay updated and be able to adapt and incorporate new products and services. With this in mind, telecentre.org will share its knowledge about innovative social enterprise models with professionals involved in corporate social and environmental responsibility from South America and the Caribbean.
telecentre.org will participate at the sixth Inter-American Conference on CSR _ Organized By: Multilateral Investment Fund (FOMIN) of the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB)_ which focuses on Inclusive Business - corporate initiatives that benefit companies and generate social and economic value by integrating low-income populations in their productive activities. Inclusive business creates mutually beneficial commercial relationships (such as associates, suppliers of goods and services, or distributors) with low-income people living in vulnerable situations.

The event will take place December 4 and 5 in Cartagena de Indias, Colombia. On Friday, December 5, from 11:30 am to 1:30pm, telecentre.org will lead a working session: Innovative social enterprise models: Using community telecentres as....

In collaboration with partners in Latin America and the United States, including NESsT and TechSoup, telecentre.org will discuss a new pilot project to identify and test models that use telecentre networks as a distribution channel for content and services.

By developing new products and services that can be offered to telecentres, support networks can generate revenue to sustain their activities and help telecentres provide more opportunities to the communities they serve.

Part of telecentre.org's Content & Services initiative, this pilot explores new approaches to social and economic development, combining base-of-the-pyramid business models, social enterprise principles, ICTs for development, and regional-horizontal scaling up. It also provides an example of how telecentre networks, NGOs, international development agencies, companies, and social enterprises can collaborate to find new ways to finance development.

The working session will use a Peer Assist technique. Project partners will present their approach and the challenges they're facing to session participants. With the assistance of a facilitator, the participants will then provide feedback and suggest solutions. In this way, the group's collective knowledge, experiences, and intelligence can be harnessed to develop creative solutions.