Background to Gitarama Telecentre

A country just emerged out of genocide is today an international scene of poverty, manifested by malnutrition, diseases, poor agricultural harvest, illiteracy, very low levels of consumption capacity, environmental degradation, uncontrolled births and over population. Besides, the recovery process from conflict and genocide is marked by trauma, mistrust and some yet unresolved issues about property redistribution (especially land) - a potential deterrent for development and discontentment among communities. The judicial system and improvement in governance and democratisation are just beginning to take root. HIV/AIDS is a major concern and the communities are generally weak physically and in terms of capacity and resources to face the vicious cycle of poverty.

Since 1994, after the war and genocide reasonable support has come in from the donor community, much of it in form of relief and emergency supplies. Government has also tried reasonably to put in place infrastructural (policy) support. Decentralisation reforms, gacaca (communal) jurisdictions and poverty reduction strategies are remarkable signs of government's commitment to improve the livelihood of its people. The trend and commitment to reconstruction and reconciliation is really pleasing but requires further input of both moral and material support. Building the capacity of the communities to enable them to handle the task of eliminating poverty and a vulnerable past is of undoubted importance. Attitude transformation of Rwandan community needs rational, well-focused efforts and patience.

Given that resources are generally scarce, it is necessary to coordinate the little that is available to avoid scattering efforts and duplication of development initiatives if we have to obtain sustainable advances towards improving the lives of communities. Experience shows that it has been difficult to establish what has been achieved and what remains to be done against the little resources so far spent. A lot of time and money is spent on surveys and evaluation by different organisations and authorities on the same subject sometimes at the same time. Same projects are duplicated by different organisations some times on same sites and same beneficiaries. The general scenario in such cases is that beneficiaries are thrown in confusion and are diverted from developing a consistent outlook in their planning. It becomes difficult for them to feel the shift from emergency aid support to a sustainable development phase. Because communities are not able to track records of assistance already given or available for them, it creates an information gap. Important information is not maintained and this is the main cause of duplication of activities by development agents at very high costs.

To develop the cultural of timely information exchange, and to get to be carried on board in views of fast economic tendencies, one needs to focus not only on the elite society members but also mass groups at grass-root level who actually constitute a significant percentage of the population. Women and youth form a majority of this category. This proposal therefore, depicts women as a focal beneficiary of this initiative.