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Uganda
Category:
Environment
Operational areas:
Rural
Vision, objectives and goals:
In early 2005 the digital divide was crossed in southwestern Uganda as the CTPH Telecentre was built and opened to the isolated community around Bwindi Impenetrable National Park. Our vision is to use its multimedia capabilities to strengthen the fragile ecosystem and conservation efforts in the area while improving the education, economy and health of the local population.
Since our nationally publicized opening in June 2005, we have graduated 30 villagers (half women) in basic computer skills courses, with a certificate from Makerere University. This year we plan to have 100 more graduates.
We are using the telecentre’s computers to input field data of recorded health observations of the mountain gorillas, collected by the Bwindi Park Rangers (via CTPH-provided handheld computers) in order to create a database to safeguard their long-term health.
The telecentre also serves an important educational purpose, bringing health and environmental awareness through multimedia content to this isolated and impoverished area.
Finally, by serving the telecommunications needs of Bwindi’s ecotourist population, the telecentre not only supports that vital source of local income, it generates enough funding to move the telecentre towards self-sustainability.
How ICT contributes to the organisational objectives:
The overall impact of the CTPH Telecentre is the dramatic improvement in mountain gorilla health monitoring, human public health, community access to information and economic opportunities and thus facilitating the sustainable advancement of the isolated region that has until now struggled to develop in any of these areas.
The CTPH Bwindi Telecentre has a positive impact on three closely related communities. The impact on any one will directly affect the others as well:
1. The Mountain Gorilla population will be healthier and able to thrive:
• Health monitoring will facilitate quick detection, diagnosis and treatment of disease; and
• Human-to-gorilla disease transmission will decrease due to villagers’ improved health practices and economic status. (These improvements are largely due to the telecentre’s educational programs).
2. The people living around Bwindi, currently among the poorest in the world, will be healthier, and their lives more economically sustainable:
• Improved economic circumstances as a result of more employment opportunities with the continued growth of the ecotourism industry and computer education programs; and
• Improved health due to: Better economic circumstances; improved health practices through education of good hygienic behavior; and reduced gorilla-to-human disease transmission.
3. The Ecotourism Industry will grow, thereby increasing the villagers’ economic revenue:
• A healthy mountain gorilla population; and the availability of telecentre services, especially email, to ecotourists and institutions including health and wildlife agencies and tour operators (whose telecentre use will also help subsidize local telecentre use.)
These impacts will be measured by quantitative data such as:
• Amount of field data entered into data base;
• Reduce the number of disease outbreaks;
• Numbers of people trained in computer skills;
• Numbers of educational programs conducted on-site, in schools, and in communities;
• Numbers of people attending the educational programs.
• Numbers of ecotourists coming to the area; and
• Ecotourist and institutional Internet use at the Telecentre.
This quantitative data will be enhanced by qualitative, anecdotal commentaries – from villagers, park rangers, ecotourism operators, etc. – on improvements in the economic and environmental well being of the Bwindi region.
Summary:
The CTPH Bwindi Telecentre strengthens the overall local ecosystem in four integrated ways.
• Monitoring the health of the endangered mountain gorillas in BINP, while improving the system of treatment of medical ailments. The health and maintenance of the mountain gorilla population are critical to the fragile environmental and economic ecosystem of the region. This project collects gorilla-health data via handheld computers to build a database, facilitating faster and better diagnosis and treatment for the species.
• Strengthening the local economy: Classes in computer training offer villagers necessary skills for employment opportunities within and beyond the national park; and maintaining the gorillas’ health sustains the ecotourism industry, the only significant income source in the region.
• Raising villagers’ and ecotourists’ environmental awareness: Multimedia environmental education programs emphasize interactions between human public health, gorilla health and ecotourism revenue.
• Improving human health practices/standards: health education, good hygiene promotion and disease treatment.
The CTPH Telecentre promotes dramatic improvements in mountain gorilla health monitoring, human public health, community access to information and economic opportunities and thus facilitates the sustainable advancement of the isolated region that has until now struggled to develop in any of these areas.
Competition year:
2006