Follow Us on Twitter
Editor’s note: This is the fourth in a series of blog posts reflecting on the evolution and impact of Microsoft’s Community Technology Skills Program you can find links to the previous entries at the end of this post.
When I think of Ren Xuping, I think about rabbits, and the importance of deep local roots in running effective community technology skills programs. Ren is the Rabbit King of China, and no one better exemplifies the entrepreneurial chutzpah of China or the value of working with a trusted local partner when introducing technology skills training programs.
Growing up in the rural village of Yuanyang, Ren was too poor to attend high school. But he loved little animals and at the age of 13 began raising rabbits. Fast forward 30 years, and Ren is now the head of a thriving rabbit-breeding empire in rural Dayi County, Sichuan Province.
Ren has done a lot to help others in rural parts of China learn how to breed rabbits as a way to generate income. In 2006, Ren and his wife, Zhang, established the Rabbit King Poverty Alleviation Research Center, which provides technology training as part of a program that teaches farmers how to breed rabbits for profit. Funded jointly by Microsoft and a Chinese NGO focused on poverty alleviation, the center uses mobile training units to reach people in 21 villages in the mountainous region around Dayi.
Ren and Zhang also helped Microsoft establish a partnership with two Chinese NGOs to establish ICT training centers in the areas of Sichuan and Gansu provinces that were hit hardest by the 2008 earthquake, which killed about 70,000 people and left nearly 5 million people homeless.
In China, we came to rely on Ren and Zhang because they know how to effectively introduce technology and help people understand how it can be relevant in their lives. This is especially important when technology is being introduced into a community for the first time and there is likely to be some resistance or skepticism.
Partners with local roots are also effective at managing basic yet important details such as finding the best location for a new training center and identifying transportation options to ensure that people are able to get to the center. Strong ties to the community also help build a sense of local ownership.
Besides helping a project have greater impact, a strong local partner can help ensure a project’s sustainability. When the community has a sense of ownership, local leaders and residents are more willing to look for other means of support to keep the training center running after the grant runs out. Without such connections, organizations must spend additional time and effort to establish trust and credibility before they can deliver effective programs.
In India, for instance, Microsoft partnered for years with Drishtee, an NGO that uses a kiosk-based system to deliver services such as healthcare, education, and microfinance loans throughout the country. Drishtee’s practice is to identify a local entrepreneur and provide that person with the tools and training needed to deliver services through the kiosks. In working with Drishtee, Microsoft realized that it takes longer for a program to become established if it does not have substantial connections within the community. Drishtee understood right from the beginning that it had to find local entrepreneurs to run these kiosks and that it could not be something imposed from outside the community.
Microsoft often partners with intermediary organizations that can help identify and support local partners that have strong local community connections and locally relevant expertise. In Latin America and the Caribbean, for example, Microsoft has teamed up with the Trust for the Americas, an international NGO affiliated with the Organization of American States, to support more than 72 CTSP partners.
In 2004, Microsoft and the Trust launched the Partnership in Opportunities for Employment through Technology in the Americas (POETA) to help local organizations in 20 countries operate nearly 118 training centers. With a primary emphasis on providing skills training to people with disabilities and at-risk youth, POETA has helped raise awareness about those vulnerable populations throughout the region.
In addition to helping Microsoft find strong local CTSP partners, the Trust helps those organizations develop locally relevant curricula and provides the training and tools needed to run an effective ICT skills program (PDF). In addition to technology training, POETA-supported programs offer locally relevant job-readiness training as well as civics and business courses.
Next week, a final word (for now) on what we’ve learned and where we’re headed with the Community Technology Skills Program.
Editor’s note:
This is the fourth in a series of posts looking at the lessons and insights Microsoft has learned from eight years of investing in community initiatives around the world:
The importance of working with organizations that have deep roots in their communities can’t be sufficiently highlighted. Organizations that are close to the people they service foster a sense of ownership, trust, and are better positioned to develop activities and services that aligned more closely to the needs of their communities. For practitioners and researchers working in development, and even for some outsiders, this seems like a no-brainer. However, the devil is in the details. Identifying those organizations that have these deep roots is not a simple matter; for example it requires knowledge about the nature of the relationship with the community, the level of trust in the organization, and if they consider it a safe and enabling social space for pursuing their individual or group goals. Adding to this complexity, there is a diversity of ways in which organizations develop these deep roots to their local community. “Deep roots” can take different shapes and forms based on the context, mission and size of the organizations, availability of partners, to name a few, and this goes beyond just knowing the people you serve.
TASCHA’s seven years of research working with NGOs that are Microsoft grantees clearly demonstrates that although there are some basic common elements that organizations share, the close roots they develop with their communities manifest themselves in many different ways. For example, LIKTA a network of organizations that provide ICT skills training and employability programs for marginalized people in Latvia have long standing and deep relations in the communities they serve. In addition, through the outreach efforts of their director, Mara Jakobsone, and some other board members the organization has strong relationships with policy-makers and other partner organizations. For Mara and LIKTA, having deep roots in the community also manifests itself in having a voice within the policy arena and a good relationship with libraries and other NGOs.
For the Washington Development Council in Washington State, USA, a network of One-Stop shops that provide ICT training and employment-related services to unemployed people in the state, working closely with the people they serve is critical for successfully designing training programs and employment services that can serve a wide variety of unemployed people (low-skilled, higher-skilled, long term unemployed, short-term unemployed, people of different ethnicities and nationalities, etc.). But it is also critical to take those deep roots to a different level and develop close ties with government agencies, libraries, and NGOs, in order to provide the people it serves with a wide variety of means and channels to successfully reintegrate them into the labor market.
I believe that Akhtar’s blog post highlights for me one of the most important and useful lessons for funding organizations and government agencies working in ICT for development: Look beyond the obvious, scratch beneath the surface, deep roots is more than knowing your people, as they saying goes in my country.
Here is also an example by Kenan who has shared how technology can make a difference: www.facebook.com/.../301562856524254