Four grassroots women representing local NGOs went to Geneva to lobby for their own space in the World Summit on the Information Society. OneWorld South Asia, a Delhi based NGO, which uses ICTs in poverty alleviation and sustainable development, has promoted the concept of creating a Grassroots Caucus for the Summit.

Arunabahen Parmer travels extensively in rural India to capture the travails and hopes of women in India using a heavy umatic camera. At the Self-employed Women's Association (SEWA), India’s largest women’s trade union network, Arunabahen works as the video producer. “Opportunities for all” was her key message to the PrepCom, as she feels that all citizens can use ICTs and not just the educated.
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This project I started with visiting the Information Village Research Project in Pondicherry. After communicating with many project managers running rural telecentres in India and elsewhere, I have felt that raising awareness within the rural communities about the services is the key to the success of such telecentres. Numerous research studies by UN agencies, and international agencies like IDRC, have critically pointed out the need to raise public awareness about the services and opportunities telecentres provide - but seemingly project designs somewhat lack to integrate this component. Budgetary allocation for communication has often been missing in the project document.

This project has once again reminded me that telecentres or any ICT-enabled development intervention in rural areas is more to do with the people and content, rather than technology. In today's market, better connecting technologies are available at lower costs, but the human effort of content generation for benefiting the grassroots people remains the same.