Literary Resources on Telecentre Sustainability 8 (In chronological order with brief description)

36.    Wikipaedia article on telecentre in general, but also contains a small section on telecentre sustainability http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telecentre. They contend that sustainability problems can be addressed through:
a.    Evolving models
b.    Evolving technologies
c.    Evolving services
d.    Community stakeholders
e.    Community involvement

37.    http://www.orphanit.com/sustainabletelecentres.html
Orphan IT is an organisation that provides mentoring services to make social enterprises and telecentres to make them sustainable social enterprises. They offer a variety of mentoring resources in print, audio and video formats through their partners to make the telecentres sustainable. They have a section on ‘Sustainable Telecentres: About our sustainable telecentres approach and the importance of social business planning for non profit ventures’. 

38.   www.choike.org: This website has a page on ‘Telecentres’ (http://www.choike.org/2009/eng/informes/3084.html#Evaluation and su...) that takes the visitor to the telecentre online database. This database contains information on various telecentre themes and issues. In the “Related Links” section on the right hand side of the web page, there is a link called ‘Evaluation and Sustainability’. It contains a link to the Chasquinet article, ‘Telecentre Sustainability: What does it mean?’
This paper argues that telecentre sustainability cannot be viewed on the basis of financial sustainability alone. In order to reach the goals of community development and financial sustainability, community-based telecentres have to integrate social, political, cultural, and technical sustainability as vital elements into the planning and operation of the telecentre.

39.    Sustainability First: http://sustainabilityfirst.blogspot.com/

In order to address the issues related with telecentre sustainability, 'Sustainability First' research funded by Telecentre.org was one of the foremost efforts in this regard. It intended to study the available best practices, recognize the constraints hidden at the multiple layers of the telecentre eco-system that affect telecentre sustainability, and formulate mechanisms to generate social-entrepreneurial spirit within the overall telecentre eco-system.

This blog site lists down some of the best practices in sustainability across the world. It also contains a report on the Sustainability panel held during GK3 in December 2007.  http://sustainabilityfirst.blogspot.com/2007/09/leader-centric-netw... Another article - if leader centric networks are more sustainable in comparison to other networks.

40. 360 Latam Project: http://home.techsoup.org/pages/telecentre.aspx

The 360 Latam Project sought to address economic and organizational sustainability. It was jointly supported by Telecentre.org, TechSoup Global (http://www.techsoup.org) and the Non-profit Enterprise and Self-sustainability Team or NESsT (http://www.nesst.org/). They worked on this project in partnership with three Latin American regional networks - Asociación de Telecentros de Información y Negocios (Association of Information and Business Telecentres or ATN) (http://www.atn.org.br/) in Brazil, Fundación Empresas Publicas de Medellin (Medellin Utilities Company Foundation, or EPM) (http://www.fundacionepm.org.co/site/) in Colombia, and Comité para la Democratización de la Informática (Committee for the Democratization of Information Technology, or CDI) (http://www.cdi.org.br/) in Chile.

360 Latam's mission is to build sustainability not only in the networks and telecentres served, but also in the local communities served by the telecentre. This project concluded that being a social enterprise, a telecentre's success is closely interlinked with the surrounding community's development. When a telecentre can help its customers find employment, education, and training, the community's success will translate into success for the centre.

41.    Khumalo, Fikile (not known) Preliminary Evaluation of Telecentre Pilot Projects, Universal Service Agency (USA), South Africa http://www.itu.int/ITU-D/univ_access/evaluation/usa.html

According to him, for telecentres to be a long-term solution, they must be sustainable. Sustainability, as used in this document, means financial sustainability. At the least, a telecentre must pay for its cost. At best, it must generate a surplus that can contribute in local economic development. This means that the test, therefore, is that first the telecentre should provide quality service to the local community. For this, one has to look at different aspects of the telecentre enterprise, such as:
a)    Functionality: For example a telephone should be of an acceptable voice quality and work most of the time.
b)    Accessibility: Second, the facility must be available for the community at all reasonable times.
c)    Sustainability: Finally, the operator must generate revenue to cover the costs and make a reasonable surplus. Other indicative factors are more of a long-term nature (e.g. wider social economic impacts).”

42.    Morshed, K.A.M. (not known) Telecentre Sustainability: The need for multi-stakeholder Partnership. http://pallitathya.org/telecentre/presentations/Tele-center%20Susta...

This PowerPoint presentation recognises the importance of Telecentre Sustainability and suggests strong need for multi-stakeholder partnerships. K.A.M. Morshed makes the case that donor supported telecentres are continually at risk of closing down once the support is withdrawn and that the lack of market disciplines further reduce incentives to perform well as well as the ability to face competition when it arrives. With this in mind, sustainability in the telecentre environment is a challenge, both for the governments and communities that support them.