CROSSING THE GREAT DIVIDE
by Anthony David

By linking Internet access with community radio rural people can plug into the world's knowledge banks.
A farmer walked into Kothmale community radio one day seeking information on how to improve his tomato crop. He sat at the station's computer and found all he needed and more on the Internet.

"This information is vital for this man," explains Eric Fernando, a veteran Sri Lankan broadcaster and director-general of the country's state run radio which manages Kothmale radio. This station has broken new ground in community broadcasting and communication services by marrying a "traditional technology" -- radio -- with a new one -- the Internet. In doing so, it has also proved that the so-called digital divide can be bridged.

To see for themselves what was being done at the station and to look at further developing this idea on an international scale, some 60 policy makers from international agencies and donor organizations, and representatives of the DOT Force (Digital Opportunity Task Force) from G8 industrial nations, spent a week in Kothmale, an isolated Sri Lankan valley, at the end of last month. The meeting was organized by UNESCO which is firmly convinced that Kothmale is the way to the future.

The community radio station was launched with UNESCO's support in February 1989. It serves a total population of 350,000. In 1998, UNESCO provided $50,000 to hook the station up to the Internet. The connection allows programmers access to a wealth of information to answer listeners' queries or improve their broadcasts. However, the radio has also made the equipment available to villagers, installing an extra computer at the station and another two in the libraries of neighboring villages, where people can browse the net at will.

Anyone wandering into Kothmale on an average day, reports Australian volunteer Tanya Notley, might come across "two local music teachers practicing songs that they will record later in the day. They are both blind musicians who teach at a local school. Another six young girls from the nearest village are singing local folk songs. In the computer room, Kosala is creating an animation piece for a Sri Lankan film company while on the other computer, Buddhikaan enthusiastic regular who had never used a computer before he came to the center, is chatting with someone in India while simultaneously designing his personal web page. Some studio equipment is being moved to the van: tonight there will be a live broadcast from Wickramasinge College, where the students will perform a musical show."

The success of Kothmale was evident to all the participants at the meeting. To share their conviction that this community radio/Internet service could make a difference they sent a message to the World Economic Forum taking place in Davos Switzerland at the same time, and attended by some 2000 political, industrial and financial decision makers. They called on governments to draw up policies to bridge the digital divide and urged nations to ensure equal access to information and communication facilities in disadvantaged areas.

Such policies, they said, should look at maximizing the use of existing community radios and developing other such community-based communications facilities such as UNESCO's network of "telecentres" which provide computer and information services and telecom facilities for individual use and community development.

They should also focus on disadvantaged and marginalized groups like women and girls, ethnic or other minorities and the very poor. Networking, they suggested, provides great potential for cutting costs, training the necessary human resources, generating revenue and ensuring sustainability.

To get the ball rolling, UNESCO launched a new partnership program to combine community broadcasting with Internet and related technologies. Switzerland offered 1.5 million Swiss francs and Belgium will donate 334,000 Euros to finance it.
In another strong show of support, Volunteers in Technical Assistance, an American NGO at the meeting, announced that it will allocate ground stations on a priority basis to UNESCO supported networks of community radios and telecentres for sending and receiving e-mail via low-orbiting satellites. This will enable remote villages with no telephone lines to access and exchange up to 50 pages of information a day.

The UNDP Asia-Pacific Development Information Programme also committed itself to providing policy and technical assistance to community projects in Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam, East Timor, Bhutan and the Pacific Islands region.
"Information and communication have become the basic tools of the poor in their efforts to improve their lives," summed up Anura Priyadarshana Yapa, Sri Lanka's minister of information and the media. "Bringing power of knowledge to the people enables them to defeat poverty and enhance the quality of their lives."