Project status: Closed

Country: Colombia

Partner: Colnodo

Impact goal: 50 people

About the project

Colnodo has since 2017 been developing the implementation of nine community networks. This is done in alliance with multiple local, national, and international organizations in different regions of Colombia. With the change of government in Colombia, they are trying to ensure that community networks are taken into account in the National Development Plan. This way they can be part of the communication ecosystem to bring connectivity to remote rural areas. This encourages high community participation. Currently, only 25% of the population is connected. This project aims to initiate the 'School of Community Networks'. This initiative will provide specialized training, enabling these entities not only to connect to the network but also to design, establish, and manage their own communication platforms through strategies of appropriation and virtual format training.

Results

As a starting point, these actors were contacted to share the idea of the School, receive their contributions and recommendations and learn about experiences developed in other countries. Based on these meetings, a state of the art was designed that gathers different experiences in the creation and implementation of Community Network Schools. The objective was to obtain perspectives and knowledge that could serve as inspiration to propose a learning model adapted to the Colombian context. Some of the schools analyzed were:

• Amazon Community Network School: Training to create, maintain, operate and consolidate community networks in the Brazilian Amazon led by the Saude e Alegria project and the Association for Progressive Communications (APC), in Brazil.
• Techio Comunitario: Training program for the management of ICT networks in indigenous and rural communities in Latin America led by Redes A.C. of Mexico and Rhizomatica.

In the path of articulating alliances and with the objective of identifying the learning needs of social organizations, community networks and leaders in rural areas of the country, Colnodo joined in alliance with the ICESI University of Cali and held a meeting with leaders of community networks accompanied by Colnodo in the southwest of Colombia. During this event, their expectations were identified and based on their experiences, the thematic priorities for the first course of the School of Community Networks were determined.

As a result of these workshops, different face-to-face and virtual training processes were identified. The participants expressed a preference for the face- to-face modality with practical workshops and also highlighted the learning needs focused mainly on the technical component of community networks.

In addition to this meeting, Colnodo's virtual appropriation team, with the support of the community networks team, held two face-to-face workshops with the objective of identifying the thematic needs of the community networks that Colnodo had accompanied and that could be addressed through the School of Community Networks. From these workshops, important elements were defined to be taken into account in the first course of the School of Community Networks, such as:

• Population profile
• Structure of the contents
• Methodology
• Type of resources

As a result of these workshops, the analysis of the information gathered and the collective construction, the virtual course "Community Networks: Managing technological autonomy from rural communities" was designed and structured. The objective of this introductory course is to orient participants on the essential concepts required for the design and management of a community network, using the methodology developed by Colnodo.

In the structural design of the course it was decided to expand the content to 6 thematic modules in order to as far as possible address all the essential topics or the management of a community network. The modules are:

• Module 1: Community communication networks
• Module 2: Recognizing and Dreaming the Territory
• Module 3: Communicating to transform
• Module 4: Telecommunications and Internet
• Module 5: Technical design of the community network
• Module 6: Strategies for Community Network Sustainability

The number of participants in the course was decreasing in each module, a situation expected in all online courses due to the challenges that virtuality implies, such as autonomous work, the activities to be carried out, the lack of computer and connectivity, among others. Considering that the majority of participants were from rural areas, with greater connectivity barriers, the number of 60 participants who completed the course is a great achievement, exceeding the proposed goal (50 participants).

About the partner

Colnodo is a non-profit organization based in Colombia, working on facilitating the exchange of information in favor of the development and improvement of the quality of life of Colombians. Their mission is to promote the access, use, and understanding of Information and Communication Technologies. Through this their goal is to foster inclusion, social and human development, and improve people's quality of life. They started their operations in 1993, providing an electronic communication system to organizations working for sustainable and innovative development in Colombia.

Visit their website here to learn more about them!