When the melody from my mobile woke me up one fine morning two years back, with a flashing number from a rural part of Andhra Pradesh, I had this unusual sense of excitement. I have always had this sense of premonition whenever something exciting is about to happen.

The call was from World Corps India, (WCI) office located in Kuppam, inviting me to participate in a pilot project establishing telecentres. I should admit that on my way to Kuppam, I was rather sceptical and not entirely convinced about IT being an answer to overcome some of the evils of inequality in our underserved communities.

Two years later, today, I look back with pride about the achievements of these telecentres known more popularly as Community Information Centres (CICs). And I also look forward to WCI replicating this success locally and globally.

I would like to share with you how this remarkable project has been conceived, designed and implemented, ensuring viability and sustainability.

Introduction to World Corps India
Deepa Anandakrishnan and Praveen Kumar Prithvi established World Corps India (WCI) in the year 2000. WCI is a branch of World Corps, Seattle, USA, and an international non-governmental and non-profit organisation.



The mission of WCI is to identify youth in the age group of 18 to 35, from rural areas and train them “to become effective business and social entrepreneurs, community leaders and global citizens that will help in poverty alleviation, environmental protection and global peace building”.

WCI adapted a two-pronged strategy, which provided information to the rural communities while providing gainful employment to rural unemployed youth who own, operate and manage the “Community Information Centres” (CICs)

The need
There are “Seven Cs” determining whether the Internet will reach India’s villages and stay.

• Current – Alternative power supply in areas without electricity
• Communication – Landlines/wireless connectivity to internet and online resources
• Content – Information on local specific knowledge and in the local language
• Community – Prioritising peoples’ needs for their development
• Commerce – Financial sustainability and viability
• Context – The look and feel and design of the site
• Capacity building – Building knowledge or skills among the community

WCI focuses on the aspect of capacity building.


Information poverty and rural to urban migration
With over one billion Indians, the rural poor are the last to get priority information on various subjects, which would enable better access to basic needs, educational and financial resources. Moreover, migration of young people from rural to urban areas in search of opportunities deprives the rural communities of the energies and brain resources of such young people. WCI adapts a two-pronged strategy, which provides information to the rural communities while providing gainful employment to rural unemployed youth who own, operate and manage “Community Information Centres” (CICs). It provides sustainable and affordable ways of getting information to poor communities that are very critical to both an individual’s and a community’s development. Access to information resources also represents new opportunities for agriculture, economic development, education, health and environmental protection in the rural areas.

To achieve this, the CIC projects focuses on: -

• Buildings a Cadre of World Corps Professionals (WCPs) who are provide training in computers and Internet, developmental english, community outreach and development skills, entrepreneurship development, business management, marketing and communication skills, personality enhancement and value education to promising young leaders from the rural areas.
• Launching WCPs into CIC business of providing information, communications and other allied services.
• Partnering WCPs with existing government agencies, private businesses and community based organisations for effective application of ICTs in underserved communities.
• Replicating the CIC model throughout India to reach a larger number of unemployed rural men and women.

The pilot project CIC
WCI’s experience in its project in Kuppam, Chittoor district, Andhra Pradesh, India provided important lessons for exploring the potentials ICT has for generating employment in the rural areas of India. The model that WCI attempted focused on capacity building of the youth, which enabled them to create a micro-enterprise - “Community Information Centres” for their economic sustenance, while meeting the communication and information needs of the communities in small towns, villages and habitations. The CIC is a hybrid model combining the provision of G2C – Government to Citizen services, B2C – Business to Citizen services and C2C – Civil Society Organisations to Citizen services and information and communication services all under one roof. The CIC functions both on behalf of the community, the government and the private agencies in providing information services that caters to the underserved communities by using IT-enabled Communication Technologies. Apart from taking the benefits of ICT to the underserved communities, this project has created an opportunity for sustainable and meaningful employment for the unemployed youth of rural areas. Empowering the youth with the necessary knowledge, skills and awareness has also enabled them to take leadership roles to bring in other value additions to their communities.

Public private partnership model
The public-private partnership model in the CICs project is significant because it has pooled resources from public and private agencies and was implemented with core complementary competencies. The result has ‘added value’ to what each sector could have achieved alone. For example, in the CIC project in Kuppam, WCI provided the training and follow-up support to the youth entrepreneurs, while the government department like the District Rural Development Agency (DRDA) provided the financial assistance in the form of a loan to the youth entrepreneurs to set up the CIC.

Meanwhile one of the leaders of IT industry, Hewlett Packard (HP) has developed web-based e-Governance solutions, which enables the rural people of Kuppam to walk into a CIC and fill applications online and submit them for processing to the concerned government departments. The suite of web-based applications also provides access to information on agriculture, education, employment, health and governance.

“Youth inclusive” project
The CICs have provided opportunities for talented young people of the rural areas to have the necessary knowledge and skills to remain, and serve their community while earning a decent livelihood. The importance of putting young people in charge, starting with their input and ensuring that they have a key responsibility for the outcomes have spurred and encouraged rural development, social and economic development of the region thereby contributing to the vision of nation building.

Usage of information technology
The usage of ICT has been quite high in providing information and communication services to the community members through the CICs. Through Internet access and computer usage the CICs are able to provide information and communication facilities that are reliable and easily accessible to the rural population. The online information accessed through the Internet provides very useful information pertaining to the various interests of the rural people.

The project has proven the value of ICT for development and bridging the digital divide by the following aspects (a) Building the capacity of grassroots level institutions (b) Availability of Government applications, forms and directory services (c) Bridging the digital divide (d) Alleviating information poverty.

With the use of ICT the project promoted the following information that was not earlier available instantly.

• Government information on schemes for children, youth, women, widows, farmers, senior citizens, tribals, for people below poverty line through downloading of forms and government orders (GOs)
• Employment and business opportunities
• Online status enquiry of passport registration
• Education information – availability of courses for higher education, career guidance and scholarships, examination results
• Desktop publishing services to students, teachers, farmers, community workers, women and youth self-help groups
• Gathering and transmission of local specific information through the network of CIC at the Mandal (an administrative unit of Government at village level) Headquarters
• Weather information, daily news and bulletins
• Computer training and education to the community members

Accomplishments of the project
Fifteen CICs have been set up in Kuppam constituency catering to the information and communication needs of the people.

• Facilities of the CICs are being utilised by government departments, NGOs, self-help groups, farmers, students and poor communities of the rural areas. The CICs have over 60 regular institutional clients and 75 individual clients using the services of ICT
• The CICs have created better opportunities for bridging the “digital divide” and alleviating “information poverty” among the people who are always the last to receive information
• In bridging the digital divide the CICs have educated and trained 350 people in usage of computers and Internet. Information was provided to 3500 unemployed youth on employment opportunities, 750 students on examination results and admissions into educational institutions, 80 farmers on market information and agricultural practices, 100 people on health and family planning and information on various development schemes of the government to more than 4000 people
• Direct self-employment opportunity to 28 unemployed youth and an additional 15 rural unemployed youth were provided employment through the CICs
• The CICs have become pioneers in their respective Mandals (village level governing body) to offer such a wide range of services in response to the needs of the community. On an average the number of visitors to each CIC varies from 175 to 200 a week.
• The average income earnings of each CIC vary from Indian Rs. 4,500 to Rs. 6,000 (USD 1000 to 1200 approx.) that is sufficient for the beneficiaries and their families living in rural areas
• This project laid the road map for faster integration of e-Governance facilities into the rural areas of Kuppam constituency

Place for e-Learning
People of all ages from school going children, college students, youth, government employees, teachers and businessmen are playing computer-enabled games. They get familiar with the computer operations and gain keyboard skills by playing games. Through the computer games they are able to overcome their computer phobia. Particularly in the rural areas, rural people are in a mindset that computer work is a skill that is a prerogative of only the urban-based educated, rich/middle class professionals. But by playing games they realise that playing or doing work with a computer is a skill that could be easily developed through familiarity and practice, regardless of one’s educational, geographic and financial status.

Access to government information
WCI began working with Hewlett Packard in promoting online application processing for the citizens of Kuppam at the CIC. Before the launch of the “Yojanaalu – schemes of the Government of Andhra Pradesh” (e-Governance services), the CIC entrepreneurs were given training in the new software application. Be it a Widow Pension Scheme, Old Age Pension Scheme, Girl Child Protection Scheme, Individual Sanitary Latrine Scheme or Ration Card Facility, the people have had this to say. “I have already applied for the Old Age Pension and there is no response for that, so I thought of applying for it again. I came to know about the Yojanalu and doubted whether this is going to fetch me good results, but after coming to the CIC, I got confidence on it.”

Mrs. Gowrumma of Boggupalli Village, Kuppam Mandal, working as a daily labourer.

“This seems to be a good system and easy. There is a bill given to us and we can follow-up on this with the CIC people.” - Mrs. Jayalakshmi of Vepuru village who had applied for a ration card facility, working as a daily labourer. A ration card would enable her to buy rice, pulses and oil at subsidised rates from the government authorised fair price shops.

The potential application of the CIC model for replication in other regions is evident from this Kuppam experience.