Information System For e-Community Centres

Abstract

Agriculture, Fisheries and related activities are the chief livelihood of majority of the population of Asia and often they live in under-developed and remote areas. Rural and remote communities have less access to ICTs compared to their urban counterparts. To provide equitable access to ICTs to rural communities, Governments and civil society organizations have setup community e-centres (CeCs) in rural areas. In Sri Lanka ICT Agency and Sarvodaya play a major role to promote ICT in rural areas. The 1st Multi-purpose community centre has been set up in Rathnapura as a pilot project and now it has expanded to Rural Knowledge Centres, e-Library, IDB (Internally Displaced Persons) , DLC (Distance Learning Centres) and Virtual Villages.

Virtual Village Project is a unique IDRC funded research project on last mile connectivity. In this project Sarvodaya has partnered with University of Colombo School of Computing (UCSC), University of Peradeniya and Center for women's Research (CENWOR) .As a pilot project two villages have been selected and they are functioning in Meewala in Gampaha district and Kuda Oya in Hatton.

The project, Information system for e-community centres is a pilot project, implemented to give an idea about how to facilitate the rural community providing means to access appropriate information and knowledge. Since the functions carried out in e-Community centres are varies and the system is not going to act as a direct service product, It has been focused mainly on the agriculture and livestock fields. In general, it extends in several directions such as Agriculture, Livestock, Plant and Natural resources, Marketing and Education. The web portal contains content management features to customize web in order to give it an unique appearance so that each community centre can have their identity on the web. The system intends to facilitate rural community accruing following goals; • Improving Economic competitiveness, Diversity and Adaptability of rural communities • Facilitating development of policies that enhance the well-being of rural people • increasing community capacity to deal with change • Linking natural resource industries, including agriculture, with community and environmental resources • Increasing social viability through enhancing the self-reliance of families and communities