Clark J. (2001) Promoting Participation in Telecenters, in Journal of Development Communication: Special Issue on Telecenters 12[2]

online: http://ip.cals.cornell.edu/commdev/documents/jdc-clark.doc

The author explained the case of telecentres in Western Australia, which are 90 across the country and operate since 1990. Telecentres are networked together with common Government support, a Perth based Government run support unit, but each telecentre is individual in its own management, ownership and responsibilities to its particular community.

Author discusses about the important role of the community in the management of telecentres and in the decision of which services they have to provide.

She took the example of the Boyup Brook’s telecentre, the most successful one of the network, explaining how the staff tried to analyze different needs of different sectors of the community and to overcome the perception that “the telecentre is only about computers”, embarking on a number of enterprising activities and events to attract the non computer interested sector of the community.