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Spain
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Category:
A Global Village
Vision, objectives and goals:
Our project is unique in the sense that it provides free access to all the people living in Extremadura, paying special attention to less favoured social agents:
„X To promote free access to ICT to every citizen.
„X To spread out local and regional culture by making people participate in the Information Society.
„X To develop abilities, such as the entrepreneurial capacity in order to build a new region.
„X To create a social and virtual space in order to build a compromise of our people with the transformation needed for our region.
„X To create techNo-literacy best practices guidelines that allow us to favour a multiplicador effect, that is to say, to transfer this kNowledge to other communities and regions within Europe.
How ICT contributes to the organisational objectives:
Our project pays attention to every social group in a different way, adapting the activities to their necessities (women, elder people, cultural agents, workers, businessmen, etc). We create collaboration nets between people with similar interests and we put them in contact by e-mail, chats by IRC, etc. so, we generate possibilities to create new business. We also pay attention to different social worries: environment, agriculture, ecoNomy, health and tourism are some of our main objectives. We create initiatives that have positive influences on our community (Compilation of popular songs, creation of a digital newspaper made by people from our region in order to spread our culture all over the world.) We measure the results and the fulfilment of people needs by the following data (since May 1999):
Direct:
„h 13. 000 e-mail addresses have been created
„h 800 web pages have been elaborated
„h 700 people collaborate with us.
„h Our web page has had 1.270.000 visits.
„h 16.000 visits to our digital newspaper.
„h 145.000 people have come to our centres.
„h 24.000 users.
Indirect:
„h Purchase of computing equipment.
„h Purchase of new domains.
„h New Internet connections.
„h Installation of new ISDN lines.
„h Selling and buying products in the net.
„h Young people have found jobs in the Net.
„h The town councils of the towns where there are centres provide services to the citizen, (e-democracy) thanks to the lessons learnt by attending to the NKC.
It is worth mentioning the change of thinking the people who attend to our centres experiment and the awareness related to the possibilities of the ICT.
User needs:
Extremadura, a region with 1.690.419 inhabitants and 41.602 km2, is one of the regions with lower income rates in Spain and in the European Union (Objective 1). 50 years ago, it reached nearly 2 million inhabitants, a population reduced by massive emigrat
Summary:
This project is managed by AUPEX (Asociación de Universidades Populares de Extremadura), promoted by the Education, Science and TechNology Regional Ministry and works with the collaboration of the town councils of the villages and cities where the centres are established, the Regional Ministry of Culture, the Women Hall of Residences and 10 neighbourhood associations. This project has developed since May 1999 the TechNological Literacy Plan proposed by Extremadura Regional Government to introduce our region into this New Age of Communication, Information and KNowledge. These Centres were piloted in six villages for six months, later on 14 centres were opened in rural areas and Now other 12 centres have been opened in the less favoured areas of cities with more than 20.000 inhabitants. The aim of this plan is to have a NKC in each of the towns and villages in our region in order to promote connectivity and equal access.
The NKC are public spaces, placed in social and cultural centres, with computing equipment eNough for every social sector to accede to the new opportunities the ICT offer through the Internet. Each NKC is managed by two technicians (one of them is the computing technician and the other one a social monitor that has the function to invigorate) that are the interfaces between the population and the techNology getting nearer the citizen through different strategies, making them to become familiar to ICT.
The NKC have become a place for the experimentation and creation of new opportunities, creation of courage for our region, creation of virtual communities and for the introduction of Extremadura into the New Age. With the creation of these centres people from rural areas and less-favoured areas will have the same opportunities as those with higher income.
Competition year:
2001