The National Academy of Agricultural Sciences in New Delhi hosted ‘Mission 2007: Every village, a knowledge Centre - A Road Map’ on July 9-10, 2004. This high level policy consultation was organised by M. S. Swaminathan Research Foundation and One World South Asia with support from IDRC, CIDA, NASSCOM Foundation and SDC.

Over 250 participants and delegates including panelists, keynote speakers and task force coordinators discussed and debated various issues in launching a nation wide and highly ambitious national movement. The expertise and free flow of ideas, issues and concerns reflected the vast experience of the various stakeholders who participated in this national consultation.

The idea of the National Alliance for Mission 2007 was mooted in a consultation held in Chennai in May this year. Over 43 organisations have since committed their support to this alliance. They also realised that the task of achieving the mission objective of making every village a knowledge centre was ambitious one, which required a lot of collective thinking. Several task forces have since been set up to address the issue of connectivity, content, policy issues, space applications, organisation, M&E, scalability and resources.

This forum was an opportunity for these task forces to share their reports in the plenary of the opening day. Other participants representing the various stake holders – government, private sector foundations, civil society organisations and donors aired their concern for focusing on local knowledge for local planning and to insure that communities are empowered while building infrastructures and not only limited to technical projects. It also called for collaboration within grass root organisations and to upgrade the PCOs to knowledge centre and not to promote only technology.

The concept of the alliance is to build a non-hierarchal flexible structure to enable collaboration and avoid duplications of efforts by various stakeholders.

The high point of the meeting was a videoconferencing between all the metros facililated by British Council. Several core experiential concerns and suggestions emerged during this session.

The second day’s plenary focused on policy framework and the plan of action. The Mission 2007 was successfully launched with many more stakeholders, especially from the government endorsing this initiative. The momentum created within this consultation was shared with the media and endorsed by over 100 agencies.

The secretariat of the alliance has been established at One World South Asia, New Delhi with NASSCOM Foundation with MSSRF as members of the secretariats.

For further details and to pledge your support, contact geetasharma@oneworld