Telecentre is one of the key components of the information and communication technologies (ICTs) enabled system of information and public services delivery. To build an effective and sustainable system of information delivery, application of advance information and communication technologies (ICTs) appears to be indispensable. ICTs facilitate management of information and aids varied forms of communication between human beings and electronic systems, and within the electronic systems themselves through capturing, storage, processing, communication and display technologies. ICTs enable knowledge gateways to act smart, intelligent and dynamic enough to package knowledge specific to locale environment.

Telecentres have emerged as a centre of government service delivery at the local level as well as an effective means to bridge the digital divide at the national and global level. In the emerging knowledge society and economy, information holds the key to stimulate economic growth, capacity building, provide livelihood and empowerment of the poor and marginalised sections of the society and so on. In addition, the role of telecentres appears to be crucial in addressing new challenges to human beings, such as climate induced vulnerabilities, disaster management, food security, to name a few. Eliminating the distinction between the information-rich and information-poor is also critical to eliminating economic and other inequalities between North and South, and in improving the life of all humanity. Therefore, telecentres occupy a central position in any information and service delivery system. Owing to the multiple uses of telecentres and its transformative impact, a rapid increase in the number of  telecentres has taken place. An encouraging trend has been observed in Asia and Africa where telecentre movement has got a fillip. These ICT enabled Kiosks are breaching conventional barriers of society and public administration.  

Practically speaking, in order to create a telecentre movement across the world and make it sustainable, skilled human resource is one of the main prerequisites. A telecentre manager needs technological as well as entrepreneurial skills to run the telecentre. To provide the services to people he/she must be efficient in computer handling and make it financially sustainable, he/she should have entrepreneurial skills. It has been felt across the world that a coordinated strategy and programme would be placed to fulfill these requirements for a sustainable telecentre movement. To enhance the human resources development, an initiative has been taken in the form of telecentre.org Academy. Generally speaking, telecentre.org  Academy is a skills development programme that supports actors involved in creating new and inclusive economies in developing countries, particularly at the grassroots level, by taking advantage of knowledge and information into both tangible and intangible services for millions of marginalised and poor communities living in semi-urban and rural areas across the world. The mission of the telecentre.org Academy are following:   

• Establishing a global programme to support the learning needs of over one million telecentre operators, thousands of key policy makers, investors and also the leaders of existing and emerging networks who seek to succeed in telecentre work;
  
• Developing appropriate learning systems and curriculum, based on the learning needs of numerous grassroots-level knowledge workers and other stakeholders, in an attempt to sustain telecentre operations as mini and micro social enterprises;

• Establishing linkages with academic institutions for developing a linear career path for grassroots-level knowledge workers;
  
  
• Establishing linkages with telecentre networks for peer-learning support, mentorship, and placement services;

• Demonstrating that the learning programme initiated by the academy fulfills the human resource development mandate of various governments around the world, in line with their national priorities.

The telecentre.org Academy ecosystem
After working on the job of creating the telecentre.org Academy for sometime, it became apparent that the ecosystemof the Academy needed to be developed first if the global programme and its mission were to be successful. Basheerhamad Shadrach, Lead, telecentre.org Academy has developed an ecosystem framework that serves as the best guide for implementing the Academy.

The ecosystem of the telecentre.org Academy has evolved after years long consultations with poor dwellers and development practitioners at the grassroots level across the world. telecentre.org Academy Ecosystem is a complex design of global secretariat, national academies, consortium of universities, learning management system, global curriculun and learners. The functions and responsibilities of each actor is loosely defined and all these actors are interlinked with each other and complement each other in multiple ways. The system is institutionalised to address the needs of the learners who work in telecentres and develop a course for them so  that they can be equipped to work in communities. Another aspect of enhancing the skills of managers and knowledge workers is to keep them abreast of technological innovations and its application in the telecentre movement. Therefore, the role of academia, with the help of curriculum development specialists, is also envisioned in developing courses that could address the needs of the development workers and keep them updated. 

Since English is not the lingua franca of the world, therefore, emphasis has been given to develop courses in local language to ensure its suitability to a particular locale. The ecosystem ensures diversity of languages and encourages that the course should be developed in local language otherwise it would not be able to serve the purpose of local workers. 

The Global Secretariat of the Acadmy is centrally placed in the ecosystem as it coordinates with national academies and consortium of universities to develop the global course. Learners would be connected with universities, Learning Management System (LMS) and finally, they would go to the telecentre centre. LMS would handle the multiplicities and complexities involved in delivering learning programmes to millions of learners in different continents. The curriculum would be delivered in their local langauges, giving the learners ample scope to learn at their own pace. In addition, because Internet connectivity is unreliable in Africa and Asia, the learning experience needed to be offline as well. It was also proposed that the development of the LMS would be suppored through curriculum commons grants.  

A global certification system has been perceived, the Samaranayake Committee figured out very early on that the nature of the Academy can be global only if the certification and assessment scheme would be global. The committee's recommendations were based on factors offering a vertical mobility in their academic pursuits and a horizontal mobility to learners in their professional pursuits. This meant that an assessment scheme that enabled learners to move across telecentres, networks and nations for performing their tasks as telecentre operators was desirable. This was imminent especially in the context of hundreds and thousands of telecentres emerging in the developing world, and particularly in the context of Latin America where operators have shown interest to move around the world to serve as telecentre operators. Such a horizontal mobility can happen only if universities agreed to certify and recognise certification based on a commonly agreed credit systems. The vertical mobility seeks to offer students opportunity to pursue their studies for gaining credit in any university of their choice in any nation that participated in the telecentre.org Academy programme. In addition, the flexible credit scheme would help to pursue all other courses offered by the university consortium on the basis of the learner's individual interests. 
In sum, the ecosystem provides an integrated model of skill and human resources development.  

    
Now they are proposing to introduce a learning programme for telecentre operators as a 'learn at your own pace' programme offering 16 credits for a certificate and 32 credits for a diploma; so that they have ample opportunities to learns based on their individual interests for specialising in learning streams that offer advance diploma certificates with 64 credits; to introduce curriculum that enhances the livelihood skills of communities served by telecentres to stimulate mini and micro enterprise development at the grassroots level, thus expanding a significant number of the telecentres as community colleges; develop leadership programmes for grassroots workers. It has also proposed the idea of curriculum commons and has contributed to research and scholarship in technology enabled learning. To achieve these goals, a well functioning, fully staffed telecentre.org Academy secretariat with adequate funds, functional learning system and a model for revenues sharing are the prerequisites. Last but not the least, to sustain the telecentre movement across the world, skill building and human resources development would be very crucial.