Since its inception and over the past two years, Egypt Telecentre Academy has achieved widespread recognition and interest in Egypt and across the MENA region. The Academy started with the Training of Facilitators who are coming from different regions in Egypt. The training took place in Cairo and it was face to face training. It was aiming at building the foundation for the Academy to reach out to a wider audience all over the country. Although the whole idea of the Academy is to provide self-learning online training materials, it was very important to establish personal relations with our first team of facilitators who will take the message further to their communities. This phase started in 2008 and for one year it was focused on telecentre leaders from different regions in Egypt. After one year we started to pilot providing the training in different Arab-speaking countries, namely Yemen and Syria. We are targeting extending into other countries including Morocco, Jordan as well as Yemen and Syria.

Our target is to make available an easy to use online knowledge base where telecentre leaders can access knowledge and information of their choice and need in two main areas: IT and Management of Telecentres. It is a capacity building program where 12 online courses are available in Arabic for self learning. The academy online platform http://www.telecentreacademy.org.eg/ is becoming a rich online resource for members of Telecentre.org MENA region network. Beneficiaries can have a online training on 12 courses in multiple subjects including: Project management skills (Communication skills, Marketing skills , Project management principles, planning principles, principles of monitoring and evaluation, scope management) and IT and web 2.0 services (Windows updating ,Internet safety ,Blogs ,Multimedia ,Computer components, Operating system). So we believe that courses could be an added value for T.Cs leaders at least on the basic level.

During the last two years we reached out to more than 950 registered in Egypt and the other countries through 19 E-learning studying round and we expect to continue to reach more people and countries in the region through Infinite number of rounds. Our arms to the community are the facilitators who are more than 25 in Egypt, and a few others in Syria, Yemen, and Jordan. The Egypt Telecentre Academy is another arm for Telecentre.org MENA network where services are being provided in Arabic for telecentres with a focus on those in underprivileged areas. We are looking to the future where we can extend the Academy into an e-learning hub for civil society including women, youth, and special needs in telecentres around the MENA region.