Delhi, May 2007. This past week I had the pleasure to be at a telecentre.org Training Commons meeting in Delhi. The Training Commons started about 18 months ago as an effort to encourage telecentre organizations in India to share the material they use to train new managers and coordinators at the village level. In the end, it evolved to become a much simpler attempt to create Telecentre Management Training Materials in five areas: grassroots marketing; entrepreneurship; infomediary skills; grassroots communication; and community development. These materials are being developed by a consortium that include NASSCOM Foundation, TaraHaat, World Corps, MSSRF and Plan International.

It was great to be back in the conversation and to see the partners really working as a team. I found out that the first text versions of these materials are almost done (the meeting was a feedback and planning session). Once this is done, it looks like the partners themselves will use these materials and like the Indira Gandhi National Open University may build a program with these modules as a foundation. Also, the process itself has been notable: you really see a collective effort from organizations with very different ideas about telecentres. This is the kind of networking for concrete outcomes that telecentre.org needs to be doing more of.