I want to present our experience on how Free and Open Source Software and Open Knowledge Systems worked as a catalyst in our mission to bridge the digital divide through Community Networks.
Dates back to 2016 when we advocated community networks and Freedombox as tools to combat surveillance. But later we went on to implement in rural areas as Public Network Access system in Nambur and Surappagudem of Andhra Pradesh.
An interesting scenario encountered in 2021 when we visited tribal interiors of Maredumilli in Andhra Pradesh. A very scenic location. Our interactions with people when we visited a village called I Bheemavaram for which the nearest telephone connectivity then was 15 kms. There is a village called Arjuna Lova where there is no power supply on top of the hill which has around 40 families staying. Things really looked exciting and new for us until we realized lack of connectivity was a barrier in many health emergencies, pregnancy scenarios, and even basic communication.
We living in cities used to wonder why the infant mortality and pregnancy death rate in our country is so high where I never saw them as rarest of rare case in my locality and family. We then realized connectivity is a key to address many problems.
We planned to setup network access across the village using antennas and basic network gear. In a short while, we were able to connect the tribal village with public network access which reaches every home in the village, resulting Whatsapp calls from home, access to social media etc. There were cases where villagers utilized the network to learn things and there was one person who runs his own youtube channel once after he began utilizing the community network infrastructure. The bandwidths were very low which most of the time have 1 Mbps for the whole village. Except for chat which helped maintain connectivity which was the major problem at that time, the bandwidth dint really help for education and learning. Moreover due to terrain and rainfall, power cuts there used to be frequent disconnections of internet source and even fiber cable was cut due to huge winds and falling of trees which is a common scenario. Though the network is setup we couldn’t maintain a seamless access. It only provided the access to network, but couldn’t help us bridge the knowledge gap.
To solve this problem and at least provide basic access to knowledge resources, we decided to provide offline content streaming to support the students, youth, farmers and women in the village. Our next attempt was a Village called Lododdi, which is much more interior and surrounded by hills in 3 directions, with mobile connectivity 20 kms away. We gathered lot of open access content available under creative commons license, video lessons for kids, content aiming farmers, women and education. We used a Free and Open Source tools like FreedomBox and few more services like Jellyfin and Kiwix to stream the content offline even when there is NO or minimal internet connectivity. This setup helped the villagers to consume the digital content even in the cases of network failure, mainly for the school and youth for education. We camped in the village, ran campaigns to install tools in the phones of villagers, setup streaming and connectivity. After few days we realized the content consumption is very low, the network provided was used by kids primarily for downloading and playing online games. And even the general public access wasnt productive the way it was intended for. And few months later Mobile towers were laid and people stopped relying on the community network setup and content.
Once again we hit a roadblock. Access comes first, then its the responsibility to empower through the access, in a way it impact the lives of the people and helps them grow in their lives and also grow the community around them thereby establishing a better society at large. Providing access, knowledge resources and utilization was there, but a lot more could be done to impact lives of the people. Facilitation of knowledge should be done inorder to create an impact rather than just providing access.
Tribal population in the villages we setup networks hardly access information in the digital form for their everyday lives. The school students we met never touched a Computer in their life, hundreds of youth failed to type faster or use shortcuts or use mouse to access computers. There are instances where they failed to clear an online exam just due to the inability to use a computer even though they have subject skill. The digital divide was growing and impacting the social and economic conditions of the people who are away from the access.
We then choose to transition the Community Networks to a Community Digital Library which we demand to run inside a Government School. Its essentially a community network run through a center with infrastructure like computers, tables, chairs, books. By running it in,side a school infrastructure we were able to provide
- Curriculum integration of computer education from 1st Class
- A facilitator to run the Center from the local village
- Open Access of Computers, Internet for the public
- Online and Offline content repository streaming through Community network across village
- Villagers able to access content from center or through community networks
- Digital Literacy drives in the village
- Learning everything through Computers and Internet
- Mobile Computer teaching through laptop in schools in surrounding villages
- School as a Digital Knowledge center for the Panchayat\
This effort hugely transformed the way the access to resources was done impacting the social and economic conditions of the people
- The only computer learning center for school kids in the entire mandal
- Students were enthusiastic in handling computers
- From case where they dint touch a mouse to a case where they are designing
- Govt Job aspirants using the knowledge bank and digital content
- Mock Exams practice, Typing practice
- Online Application of jobs
- Self Exploration of Knowledge
- Teachers accessing for learning material and resources
- Digital Literacy improvement
- Utilization of infrastructure drastically improved.
This setup will transform peoples lives and the impact can be seen in years to come, where the kids from the remote tribal and marginalized sections will lead in accessing the technology. We will await to see that. There are still challenges in the current setup
- Kids attention towards more games through internet than for education
- Content consumption was not progressive
- Frequent Internet disconnections due to wire cuts
- Power cuts due to rainfall and winds in tribal hilly terrains
- Budget and funding to run the centers in remote areas leading us to run with low infrastructure and resources.
- Network connectivity and road connectivity issues for continuous support from our end
We are a community of passionate people who are doing our day jobs at different places in the country who want to create an impact and bridge the digital divide. This was not merely possible just because of the idea or our step forward. It is the Free & Open source community, Open Knowledge systems like Wikimedia and many contributors of creative commons content, archivists, developers of tools and technology and sharing it open to access without any copyright made this possible. We just connected the pieces together to create an impact. This is our story How one challenge after other led us here.
We strongly believe Free Software and Open Knowledge Systems are the catalyst to bridge the digital divide through Community Networks. Community Driven Tools and Knowledge will drive Community Networks to impact the lives of the commons.
Cover image by Tomi Um / Wikimedia Foundation, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
