20 Years of the Telecentre Movement

Created By: Telecentre Times on 8-May-2006 12:00 AM

By: Richard Fuchs

THE TELECENTRE Movement has come a long way. From its origins in a small Swedish farming community in 1985, where the first rural telecottage opened it has become a worldwide reality.

Yet despite being more than a quarter century old, and embracing most regions of the world, it remains a movement of people

Telecentre people have always wanted to learn from one another. As digital pioneers, telecentre activists had few navigational aids.

There were no clear maps for what to do or how to do it. In 1988, when I assumed responsibility for starting a system of rural telecentres in Newfoundland, Canada, we sent a team of three rural development activists to Scandinavia to visit telecottages in Sweden and Finland. They returned
inspired.

There was no blueprint for us to follow, only the lessons of the digital pioneers that had preceded us. What we created there was better and more successful than we could have imagined. We knew we were doing something special.

That experience has changed many of our lives and has transformed mine. As the recent Telecentre Leaders’ ‘Forums at the World Summit in Tunis demonstrated, telecentre people want to be able to meet.

The tacit knowledge that gets generated in the experience of starting and managing a telecentre is “viral”. Those who possess it want to share it.

There is an equal hunger to learn from others who have had similar experiences. I recall our telecentre managers when they would get together for their quarterly meetings. They were so excited to learn, share and fortify their experience in conversation with their counterparts.

The online interaction that as become so commonplace with the near ubiquity of the web still needs to be supplemented by real human interaction.

At telecentre.org we want to help telecentre activists do exactly these things: to learn, to get together and to find ways to become more successful and sustainable. We hope to provide a platform that telecentre activists can use to have what they accomplish, acknowledged and better understood.

We hope the Telecentre Movement remains just that, a movement of telecentre activists, social entrepreneurs and the local organizations that help to sponsor their work.

This collaborative platform, which is coordinated by UgaBYTES- the Telecentre Times, is an important new asset to help that happen. Every success in this new venture.


In the late 1980’s, Rich Fuchs led the establishment of the first system for rural telecentres in North America in Newfoundland, Canada. He is now the Director, ICTs for Development at Canada’s International Development Research Centre. rfuchs@idrc.ca.

Telecentre Times, Volume 1, Number 1 

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