Prelude

On March 3, 2010, during a glittering launch ceremony at the Grand Ballroom of New World Hotel, Makati City near Manila, Philippines, telecentre.org formally became telecentre.org Foundation, a not for profit organisation housed at the Philippines government's Commission on Information and Communications Technology (CICT). The transition was symbolically ushered in by banging the gong and handing over the beautiful glass plaque bearing the telecentre.org logo to Philippine Senator Edgardo Angara and Secretary Ray Anthony Roxas-Chua III, CICT by Rohinton Medhora, Vice President, Programmes, International Development Research Centre (IDRC).

telecentre.org: An overview

telecentre.org, a social investment programme incubated at International Development Research Centre (IDRC) and supported by Microsoft Corporation and Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC) along with IDRC, was launched in December 2005 at the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS). It is described as a global community of people and organisations committed to increasing the social and economic impact of grassroots telecentres. In collaboration with all the telecentre stakeholders, who constitute the telecentre ecosystem, it provides the resources that telecentres need to succeed, like locally relevant content and services, knowledge sharing opportunities, capacity building, networking and research. 

telecentre.org was a path breaking initiative in several ways. It was envisaged as a highly collaborative and participatory programme aimed at engaging all the constituents of the telecentre ecosystem, not merely as donors and beneficiaries, but as stakeholders, who had definite stakes in the programme. Describing it as a 'social investment' programme itself connotes that all the stakeholders expect 'social returns' in the form of more digitally included and empowered knowledge communities across the world. Another remarkable feature of telecentre.org was that from the very beginning, it was conceived as a time bound project that would eventually transform itself into a more self sustainable structure based in the developing world and the formation and launch of the telecentre.org Foundation stands witness to this. 

After its formal launch in 2005, telecentre.org operated mainly through its five pillars, which are: building telecentre networks, creating content and services, knowledge sharing and capacity building. Telecentre research was added to it at a later stage. The telecentre.org journey from 2005- 2009 was fraught with success as well as challenges.

telecentre.org was envisaged as a highly collaborative and participatory programme aimed at engaging all the constituents of the telecentre ecosystem, not merely as donors and beneficiaries, but as stakeholders, who had definite stakes in the programme

The initial years were marked by intensive telecentre network building in the developing countries that led to making its presence felt in over 70 nations across the world.

At the same time, telecentre.org was engaged in policy advocacy to influence the governments in the developing countries, which resulted in forming sustainable partnerships with relevant government departments in these countries. This was a unique achievement for telecentre.org, as governments play a crucial role in determining the course of digital inclusion in their respective countries. It also provided telecentre.org with the opportunity to positively influence the government supported and initiated telecentre networks in Philippines, India, Bangladesh, Thailand, etc.

telecentre.org was also instrumental in encouraging the academia to be innovative and think in terms of serving the needs of a new and emerging cadre of learners, i. e., the telecentre operators, managers and workers. Hence, creating the telecentre.org Academy in global partnership with prestigious open and distance learning institutions is seen as another landmark in its brief, but eventful history.

Never before has anyone envisioned capacity building at such an unimaginable scale- training one million grassroots workers or  knowledge workers, as they are known in the telecentre domain, by 2015.

The vibrant telecentre.org online community is another example of using the concept of 'social media'   to perfection in meeting its unique requirements. Its website, www.telecentre.org, with more than 3000 grassroots telecentre practitioners, researchers and other telecentre stakeholders knowledge sharing with each other in four major languages, i. e., English, French, Spanish and Arabic testifies to this achievement. The following pages describe these achievements in more details as the leaders, who headed the five pillars of telecentre.org, share their experience.

The journey so far: Success and challenges

Content and services, networking and capacity building With reference to the achievements and challenges encountered during the first phase, Florencio Ceballos, former Manager, telecentre.org, says, ".... Five years later, under the telecentre.org banner, we have brought together thousands of activists, telecentre leaders, non-profit organisations, businesses, governments, and international development agencies and, we have given voice to a movement. This was telecentre.org's first order of business:  to instill a common vision, an esprit de corps and awareness that each of us belonged to a global telecentre movement."

"... the challenge was to generate the tools, resources and capacities that would enable this fledgling movement to connect, learn and share in order to grow better and stronger. To achieve this, we had to act on various fronts simultaneously. The creation and development of telecentre networks and being able to work together at the regional, national and international levels was an important and major step. Currently, we work with network partners and organisations in more than 70 countries around the world. To achieve this level of success, we first had to build cooperation and trust within the movement."

"Supporting and, in some cases, organising more than 100 face-to-face meetings (specifically, Telecentre Leaders' Forums or TLFs) proved essential. These meetings provided a forum for productive and innovative exchanges from which several networks were formalised, and from which telecentre leaders from around the world connected and shared experiences with their peers. Chile, Bangladesh, the Philippines, and Mali, among others, emerged as foundational to our nascent movement. The wiki book, the Network Management Guide, which we recently published in collaboration with dozens of telecentre leaders from every corner of the planet, is a perfect example of the road we have travelled together, and all that we have learned."

"A second challenge that demanded our attention was the urgent need to promote and support sustainability for networks and their telecentre initiatives. telecentre.org sought, with some success, to base sustainability efforts on the principles of social entrepreneurship. Specifically, we sought to link the pressing need for telecentres to offer content and services that local communities wanted with business models that allowed these organisations to generate income. To support this effort, we turned to the experiences of successful networks; sought fresh perspectives and expertise; and, worked to strengthen the institutional capacity of our partner organisations."

"A third challenge that telecentre.org faced was instilling a culture of collaboration that would result in the exchange of critical experiences and knowledge. Our response was to create a virtual online platform for partners and the wider telecentre community.  Our website, now available in four languages, boasts thousands of members, who have learned the value of sharing their accumulated knowledge through it... the daily exchanges taking place through our online platform is staggering. It is also proof that the telecentre movement has met the challenge:  it is ready, able and willing to work together for the common good."

"Finally, it was critical for telecentre.org to address a seminal demand from our partners: the need to strengthen the capacity, skills and assessment of telecentre operators and managers around the globe.  We wanted to establish a quality training programme that was quickly recognised and would be able to operate both locally and globally. This was the inspiration for creating the telecentre.org Academy. Today, it is undoubtedly one of our flagship initiatives. It has now attracted the support of nearly a dozen universities from around the world to help continue our effort to train one million telecentre knowledge workers by 2015..."

Concluding his observations, Florencio Ceballos says, "As you will see, these many initiatives were undertaken in unison by a small team of professionals based in Canada, Singapore and India... If you will indulge me, I would like to take this opportunity to personally thank and congratulate the work and achievements of each member of the team. In addition to their individual efforts, they succeeded because they, like I, could count on the invaluable support and commitment of hundreds of telecentre leaders, who were with us at every step of the journey. From Colombia to Sri Lanka, Romania to Mozambique, hundreds if not thousands of people have contributed to making telecentre.org a creation of good intentions on paper to a living, palpable and undeniable reality." 

Knowledge sharing

Apart from telecentre advocacy among the telecentre stakeholders and network building through online and offline means, as elaborated by Florencio Ceballos, knowledge sharing  has been a key area of focus. It includes not only face to face meetings, but also online community facilitation and forms one of the five Programme Pillars of telecentre.org, managed by Partha Sarker and Silvia Caicedo among others.  They note, "Over the past five years telecentre.org has connected millions of people, who are working in, for and on telecentres around the world. One of the key goals of this effort was to nurture the creation of a vibrant, resilient knowledge sharing ecosystem, which would assist telecentre leaders and operators in their search for common solutions to local problems and to improve service delivery. The main objectives of the knowledge sharing efforts, as outlined in the online strategy, were specifically aimed at: 

a) Helping people who work in telecentres build relationships, find materials and answers they need to make their telecentres thrive;

b) Providing content, online tools and Internet applications to help maintain relationships to ensure the success of regional and national telecentre networks; and

c) Creating a platform for the delivery and promotion of telecentre.org services."

"The vision rests on the values of collaboration and harnessing the collective intelligence by bringing together organisations and individuals with a common goal. The importance of using knowledge sharing as a key element of network building and programme delivery has become evident as members of the telecentre.org community have gained and honed their abilities to exchange information and learn from one another; coordinate approaches, programmes and activities; obtain common funding; create new social values; and strengthen common identities and interests.

This is a short list of some of the benefits that networks can derive from actively documenting, creating content, and sharing best practices."

They further note that "Knowledge sharing is an ever evolving process. And to do it right, it is necessary to be nimble, agile, and adaptable, especially when dealing with multiple cultures, and across many regions of the world. In this respect, telecentre.org has tried different methods and modalities..." While in the face to face meetings, telecentre.org experimented with open space methodologies for workshop facilitation, which were more participatory and engaging in nature; when selecting the online platform, it decided to use the ning platform, which offers a wide scope for multi-media content management, such as audio, video, photographs as well as blogs, discussions, groups and forums. These multitude of knowledge sharing options have resulted in increased contributions by the telecentre community, even by those who are not very well versed in writing.

Knowledge sharing is an ever evolving process. And to do it right, it is necessary to be nimble, agile, and adaptable, especially when dealing with multiple cultures, and across many regions of the world. In this respect, telecentre.org has tried different methods and modalities

Telecentre research         

Telecentre research was accommodated as one of  the five telecentre.org pillars, but initially, as aptly noted by Frank Tulus, former Senior Programme Officer, telecentre.org, "telecentre.org was not set up as a programme that would support telecentre related research... Research was supported in the form of the Telecentre Services R&D Fund, created within the content and services theme of the programme." 

"The lack of an explicit focus on research did make sense, given the growing fatigue over telecentre research at the start of telecentre.org. The programme was created after numerous consultations with different telecentre stakeholders in the field, most of which indicated that the pressing priority for a global programme that supports telecentres was not to fund more telecentre research in a traditional sense. This was seen to be an action research programme where pilot telecentre projects would be developed and evaluated."

"Despite the lack of an explicit focus on research, telecentre.org continued to support some small scale research initiatives on telecentre issues. For example, telecentre.org supported a scoping study that updated the state of the telecentre movement within the Middle-East and North Africa region - this led to the creation of a project to strengthen telecentre networks in that region. Another research initiative, carried out by a telecentre.org intern, looked at the application of Gender Evaluation Methodology (GEM) within telecentres in the Philippines and Colombia. It revealed that although theoretically sound, GEM was not a practical tool if applied within a telecentre setting. As a result, telecentre.org  supported the adaptation of GEM specifically for telecentres through the GEM Phase II project (currently still ongoing)."

"Nevertheless, telecentre.org's research endeavour took a much more prominent role in 2007, with the opportunity for IDRC to co-partner with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation on a joint research project to investigate the impact of public access to Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs). As a result of this project, telecentre.org changed its position, and subsequently made it explicit that it would support telecentre research as part of its programme objectives." 

telecentre.org's research endeavour took a much more prominent role in 2007, with the opportunity for IDRC to co-partner with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation on a joint research project to investigate the impact of public access to Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs)

Thus, as described by the leaders closely associated with telecentre.org programme pillars, the programme has helped to create and support hundreds of networks and organisations, together representing 80,000 grassroots telecentres that serve about 40 million users around the world. In the last two years, the programme has launched a global telecentre.org academy that aims to provide accredited professional development training to over one million grassroots knowledge workers.

The programme has developed content, service and entrepreneurial capacity that telecentres require to sustain operations on the ground while supporting over one hundred face-to-face events around the world, creating a growing community of active members that access and share vital resources online. 

The Move Towards telecentre.org Foundation

At the time of telecentre.org launch itself, its social investors: IDRC, Microsoft and SDC had planned for its eventual transfer to an organisation in the developing world, once it had reached a sufficient level of maturity and achieved global acclaim. The transfer news was particularly welcomed by IDRC, the former host of telecentre.org, since it was consistent with IDRC's commitment to building capacity in developing world institutions. The success achieved during the first phase enabled telecentre.org social investors to transform the programme into an independent, not-for-profit, non-governmental entity.  

This transition was planned well in advance to ensure a smooth turn over. It began with chalking out a definite time line to materialise the transition by 31st December 2009. Discussions ensued as early as 2008 during the eAsia held in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Along with these, the telecentre.org social investors also started the process of identifying prospective country that would host telecentre.org 2.0.

After initial consultations with key telecentre stakeholders, telecentre.org selected the Philippines as its new country host. It also underwent some transformation and instead of being embedded into an existing organisation, it became telecentre.org Foundation, an independent, non-profit organisation based in Manila, Philippines and was legally incorporated as such by December 31st 2009. A transition team was constituted specifically to oversee the transition, which worked in close association with the telecentre.org staff. Together, they have drafted a business plan for the next five years as well as developed a governance model that better responds to the needs of telecentre.org partners around the world. True to its collaborative and participatory nature, telecentre. org also invited the wider telecentre community to participate in deciding its future that has become intricately entwined with theirs. It launched an online discussion (on all the four major language sites) revolving around five key questions that highlighted various telecentre issues in November 2009. The discussion received  overwhelming response from the online community and their valued suggestions were also incorporated in the business plan. The transition team was headed by Maria Teresa (Tess) Camba, the Director for Field Operations of the National Computer Center, an agency of the Philippine government's Commission on Information and Communications Technology (CICT). Tess played an important role in highlighting the work done by the Philippines' Community eCentres across the world and was also instrumental in bringing them together under the Philippine Community eCentre Network umbrella, one of telecentre.org's main partners in the region.

telecentre.org Foundation: The way ahead

Currently, the telecentre.org Foundation is headed by Basheerhamad Shadrach. It has also retained the commitment of some of its former social investors, like IDRC and Microsoft that have agreed to continue their support in the future. The telecentre.org Foundation will continue the programmes of the first phase and create other innovative activities over the next five years, mainly focusing on the following:

• Becoming a live and online leader for the telecentre movement globally;
  
  
• Helping sustain the global telecentre.org Academy;
  
  
• Deepening existing network presence, while building new network associations in East Asia, China, Eastern Europe and other emerging regions;
  
  
• Becoming a policy advocate for pro-citizen centric shared and public access policies; and
  
  
• Undertaking applied research roles for private and public investors.

So, at this crucial point in time, the telecentre.org Foundation has to continue the success stories of the past and make renewed efforts to overcome the challenges. It entails continuity in some endeavours and innovations in others. In this regard, the suggestions offered by all the people associated with telecentre.org 1.0 are worth considering. They are derived from their years of experience with telecentre.org. Together, they have rejoiced its success and deeply contemplated over its challenges so that they could be overcome. Following are the success tips provided by the telecentre.org Pillar heads, based on their experience in managing this programme.

Success mantras for the Foundation from the outgoing telecentre.org team

Envisaging the future of telecentre.org Foundation, Florencio Ceballos shares, "After five years of hard work, learning, and more success than not, telecentre.org is finally ready to meet a new challenge- it will leave the protection of the International Development Research Centre, where it has been housed and grown, and move to an independent organisation that is as committed to keeping the vision of the initiative alive as ensuring the telecentre movement's future. In other words, it will continue to support and advocate for a world where people, especially the poorest among us, can access the global knowledge society through public centres for ICTs."

"The telecentre.org Foundation is inheriting a rich legacy of knowledge, resources and lessons learned. It has also received the confidence of a worldwide network of people and organisations that have already helped make telecentre.org a reality. The foundation should embrace this  network and help it grow. For this, it needs to keep only  what has functioned well, change what has not worked as well as expected, and extend its efforts into new areas that resonate with the needs of the telecentre movement in 2010 and beyond..."

"I invite the Foundation to move forward in a manner that telecentre.org has already established, with joy and enthusiasm for leading one of the most exciting initiatives that anyone concerned about development, technology, and people, could possibly undertake; by adopting a creative approach to new challenges; being curious about emerging trends and understanding that the beautiful world of ICT4D is one that is constantly changing. The Foundation should be transparent so that what it achieves is shared and supported by all stakeholders; and it should act with a sense of urgency because, at the end of the day, our efforts are focused on improving the conditions of the poorest and most marginalised people and communities in the world; they expect no less. Finally, the Foundation should step into the future with a global outlook because the greatest strength of the telecentre movement is its ability to bring together people with different beliefs, abilities, realities and needs."

Regarding the measure to be taken to address the issue of telecentre sustainability, Jacqueline Loh, former Senior Research Officer, telecentre.org opines, "telecentre.org Foundation itself needs to adopt lessons learned about social entrepreneurship for telecentre networks and think and act as a social enterprise... It should develop a business plan that aims to leverage new resources; adopt best practices; disseminate its own learnings as a social enterprise and set an example for others for innovation, product development and service delivery. At the same time, it should cultivate a culture of social enterprise amongst telecentre networks, since many networks are struggling with the idea of charging underprivileged end users for the services they offer.  Efforts towards social and financial sustainability can be complementary and mutually enforcing, and for many networks, a matter of survival."

"telecentre.org should develop a clear and well-considered strategy to provide effective support to the telecentre community and also engage the telecentre ecosystem in formulating this strategy. It is important for them to work in close partnership with regional and national networks, periodically assess progress and review the strategy, while being persistent and committed."

"It should actively and consistently communicate its work and galvanise an active Community of Practice around content and services for sustainability. Every telecentre and telecentre network strives to achieve greater financial and social sustainability and much can be learned from the experiences and insights of others. It should communicate in a way that does not require expert knowledge to understand." "It should work towards financial sustainability by developing new products and services and adopt a business-like approach to their development. This involves assessment of community needs, market demand, competitive opportunities, financial feasibility, risk and all other elements that need to be considered in developing a business plan, along with market research and careful planning for a robust strategy. Strengthening organisational capacity, internal structures and processes are critical for successfully operationalising new products and services."

"It should become an intermediary helping to leverage opportunities for members of telecentre.org 2.0 community and continue engaging not only with telecentre networks, but also the stakeholders like product and service providers, local and national governments, training and academic institutions and many others. By being an innovator watching technological and business trends and catalyzing new activities, telecentre.org 2.0 should be ahead of the curve, anticipating and seeding new opportunities."

"It should provide tools and in-depth case study information to help telecentre networks improve their performance and also think about how to efficiently provide technical support to telecentre networks. In this regard, capacity building is needed and even excellent knowledge products will need to be supplemented with further customised support. It should strategise as to how investment in telecentre networks can be effectively catalysed. Telecentre networks need to be encouraged to make considerable investments in building their capacity as well as investing in product development. There is considerable literature on content and services efforts by telecentres, but quality and in-depth knowledge products are still needed. India and China are two countries with particular wealth of diverse experiences that should be documented and shared. It should also build on the substantial efforts of ongoing initiatives, like Project 360 Latam, underway in Latin America."

Reflecting on the past practices in the telecentre.org knowledge sharing domain, Partha Sarker and Silvia Caicedo observe, "Overcoming challenges was the result of redirecting our energies based on periodic critical assessments on the progress and lessons. This, in turn, requires constant monitoring and the agility to change course midstream. It is a resource intense process. The reward is to see the many-to-many collaborations; the sense of ownership and myriad relationships that have come as a result of facilitating and promoting knowledge sharing in the telecentre community. We can now speak of a resilient telecentre ecosystem." To further strengthen and enhance the knowledge sharing initiative of telecentre.org Foundation, they share the following top ten success mantras:

• Laying out a clear and flexible strategic plan to work towards a strong online presence that makes use of the available tools and applications without falling prey to flavour of the month tools. 
  
  
• Investing in and building community websites was also key to success - as these provide a dedicated space for interaction, and a repository of resources and materials. The space has to support a variety of knowledge sharing practices and documenting, such as photos, videos, books, blogs, microblogging, forums, discussions, etc.
  
  
• Setting a system to maintaining a high information/knowledge flow through regular updates; meetings with champions; highlighting relevant topics and popular discussions.
  
  
• Organising face-to-face meetings that allow individuals to meet and build trust as the basis for future interactions. 
  
  
• Embedding community facilitators within the networks, who can create content, facilitate/animate interactions in the community; and act as a bridge connecting national and global networks.
  
  
• Identifying a person to champion responsibilities of managing and coordinating knowledge sharing efforts, including the work of CFs and other facilitators, has proved to be particularly beneficial.
  
  
• Building capacity through training, production of guides and continued support of community members raising their level of comfort to document and create content based on their own realities.
  
  
• Promoting a sense of ownership and responsibility among community members for their engagement and relationships. Identifying and capitalising on the various roles and levels of engagement: from social butterflies to lurkers.
  
  
• Supporting the creation of content and resources and making them available as part of an ongoing principle of sharing and collaboration.
  
  
• Documenting has to respond to a clear plan and concerted effort that is promoted at all levels. An example of this is the Telecentre Network Management Guidebook, which resulted from documenting the work experience of network leaders. This book offers the best advice on how to manage the establishment of a network and how to keep it healthy. The book is a great contribution to the body of telecentre knowledge and is currently available as a wikibook at: 
  http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Telecentre_Network_Management_Guidebook"

Regarding the future prospects of research in the telecentre domain in relation to the ongoing Global Impact Study, Frank Tulus notes, "Having a crucial gap within telecentre research addressed by Investigating the Social and Economic Impact of Public Access to ICT project, the question about the importance of future telecentre research may not be as prominent among academics working in the ICT4D sector. Nevertheless, telecentre.org has just begun to scratch the surface, when we can consider just how wide ranging the issue of impact of telecentres can be. The Global Impact Study, for example, has identified eighteen possible research topics that could be pursued in pursuit of its goal to learn more about the impact of telecentres. This would certainly not be possible to cover within a single study, given time and resource constraints. The following are potential research topics encountered by telecentre.org thus far, and while by no means they are exhaustive, nor is one more important than others, they represent some of the most common topics raised in numerous discourses on telecentres:

a. Gender analysis of telecentres - a number of gender research has been conducted on specific telecentres, but do telecentres generally promote equality of service between men and women?  How and in what way?

b. The role of social entrepreneurship in promoting the sustainability of telecentres - while telecentre.org has commissioned a study on such a topic, the evidences are just starting to emerge now, and the fact that social entrepreneurship takes place in the context of other factors that could affect telecentre sustainability (from the financial perspective), it would be prudent to learn more about the inter-relationships between social entrepreneurship with other factors affecting  telecentre outcomes (e.g. government policy). 

c.  Telecentres versus other emerging ICT tools, which can provide efficient access to information - mobile phone has certainly been suggested as a possible replacement for telecentres, but other technologies and situations are lurking as well, such as low-cost PCs and wi-fi/wimax. However, there is still much to learn about the impact of such phenomenon on telecentre's future.

d. Regulatory policy affecting telecentres - while research on telecom and regulatory policy have tended to favour the likelihood of telecentres being superceded by mobile phones due to rising competition that leads to low capital cost to own such tools, it is still unclear as to what sort of policy could have enabled an environment that would be conducive to telecentre growth and service adoption. Aside from the policy, what should the enabling environment constitute?

e. The role of social (and economic) innovation - most likely to be correlated with social entrepreneurship, innovative ideas and thinking within telecentres that started to emerge in the last decade. However, little is known about the impact of such innovative approaches and the triggers for innovative thinking within telecentres. How to stimulate innovative thinking among the telecentre practitioners in developing countries would be another challenging research subject." 

"More important than what should be researched in the telecentre domain, the issue of how to conduct research probably deserves a considerable amount of attention as well. As telecentre.org has discovered, many research in the telecentre field require multi-disciplinary perspectives and expertise. As a result, collaborative approaches to research (where a multi-disciplinary team participates) are likely to yield more credible findings.

The multi-disciplinary aspect of the team need not be only cross academic disciplines, but it could also employ sectoral experiences, such as conducting research carried out both by non-profit and private corporations... it is also important to involve more telecentre practitioners into the research.

Having both trained academics and those familiar with telecentre  operations working side by side can help prevent the common failure of ICT4D research: the design to reality gap." 

"...In terms of telecentre research, avoiding duplication and replication of research is an important issue, which has not been sufficiently given attention. If telecentre research is to advance more rapidly, then more research should be built upon one another. For this to happen, more research needs to be published through open access repository, and more recently, telecentre.org is also exploring the possibility of opening up the data and methods used from the Global Impact Study project... If the telecentre movement is keen on improving their knowledge about telecentre practices, then the telecentre community should consider the possibility of sharing not only broad experiences, but also specific performance and research data accumulated through business practices within the telecentres, thus far."

Hence, the former telecentre.org Pillar heads foresee a future laden with success, challenges,  continuity, changes and innovations for the newly launched telecentre.org Foundation. It would be most appropriate to conclude it with Florencio Ceballos' optimistic remarks: "I am convinced that the new telecentre.org foundation team, under the leadership of my good friend, Shaddy (Basheerhamad Shadrach), will transform this seed we planted into
a strong and embracing tree under which the telecentre movement will continue to succeed in facing the challenges ahead."