EMPOWERING THE RURAL COMMUNITIES VIA THETELECENTRES
Eric Chukweru Amadi · 2011
With the increasing use of technology and ICT in daily live there is a great tendency for those at the marginalized areas in Malaysia and those who are in the marginalized groups to 'be left out in the online activities due to the geographical limitation and the limited ICT literacy level. Thus, in the effort to empower the rural communities firstly, there is a need to ensure e-inclusion activities reached the targeted communities. The users must have the access to Internet and the appropriate skills and ICT competencies to use the online services and information. The rural communities also need to understand the language of Internet which isEnglish and to search and use the information effectively so that the process ofassisting them to become knowledge society can be accomplished. The paper will discuss in order to empower the rural communities via leT, the best agents will be the existing 1945 telecentres and the factors that have been identified to assist sustainability of the telecentres and also to ensure value add programmes can be planned and carried out at the telecentres allover Malaysia. The discussion is based ffn data and observation collected from 10 best telecentres in Malaysia conducted in the year 2007-2008.