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Life after the tsunami

16 January 2008

Using ICT to help affected areas

In August 2006, Commonwealth Connects launched an initiative to assist individuals whose lives were devastated by the Asian Tsunami. Some 200,000 people died or disappeared and a further 2 million left homeless by the tsunami, which struck on 26 December 2004.

Launched by Commonwealth Secretary-General Don McKinnon, this project – ‘Rebuilding after the Tsunami: Using ICTs for Change’ – uses information and communication technology (ICT) such as the internet to help people in affected areas rebuild their lives and their communities.

Commonwealth Connects has overseen and provides funding for all recent programmes. The lead organisation given responsibility to implement this initiative is One World South Asia, set up to bring together a network of people and groups working for human rights.

They have trained many non-governmental organisations working on rehabilitation and reconstruction efforts in Sri Lanka and India in web development and e-communication services.

These NGOs were taught how to create and design websites – in both English and local languages – which allow them to publish their work online and share effective techniques and experiences on what works best for them and the communities they work with.

The first training programme was held in September 2006 in Colombo, Sri Lanka, to introduce organisations to an open source Content Management System (CMS) – PLONE – which teaches them how to manage their websites. They were also trained in how to manage online content and how this is presented on the website.

The second round of training took place in October 2006 in Bangalore, India, primarily to help new partners working on tsunami rehabilitation in South India. People’s Actions for Development and Rural Education and Action for Liberation were both selected by Commonwealth Connects to work towards post-tsunami rehabilitation in the Nagapattinam district of Tamil Nadu in South India. They were given basic training on the PLONE CMS.

In April 2007, a further round of training was conducted in Colombo, focusing on management of local content in local languages using the CMS. This strengthened the content of these websites.

The Commonwealth Connects Programme is a Commonwealth initiative that promotes development in ICT among member countries, particularly developing countries and their communities. It focuses on five specialised areas: building policy and regulatory capacity; modernising education and skills development; entrepreneurship for poverty reduction; promoting local access and connectivity; and regional networking, local content and knowledge.