GKP joins infoDev and IICD promoting learning by doing through ICT Stories

In a nutshell... infoDev and IICD are enabling partners, having combined efforts to support a project called ICT Stories since 1998. The Global Knowledge Partnership (GKP) will join this year to help spread learning and acknowledge practitioners in ICTs for development. The overall objective of this collaboration for ICT Stories is to:

- Capture the learning process that accompanies the introduction and implementation of ICT in development through the sharing of documented stories;
- Make these sources of learning - 360 stories to-date - accessible to the public by web in a user-friendly and searchable manner;
- Add value to submitted stories by furnishing sector and process studies in Learning by Doing;
- Motivate the public to submit stories through and create awareness around the ICT Stories project by holding a widely publicised annual ICT Stories Contest that results in the Tony Zeitoun Awards.

• This year, the GKP will add its partnership to the mix, making the organisations behind ICT Stories into a tripartite. The added value brought by the GKP will be to:
  - Expand the input and dissemination channels through bringing their network to the project
  - Realise a publication on ICT Stories;
  - Introduce a significant financial prize for the winner of the Tony Zeitoun Awards; an award for a project most contributing to poverty alleviation.
  
  "Roselyne, previously a mother of five children struggling to provide the basic necessities, became Roselyne the Webizen, an Internet user who designs and produces quality footwear products and markets them to other Internet users worldwide."
  Expert from Sole Comfort Dot-Com: Bridging the global income gap through hard work, quality sandals, and ICTs (Stories Competition 2002)

The partnership
In almost all projects up-to-date knowledge about Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) is crucial, but resources and access to this knowledge are very limited. Moreover, in most projects there is neither time nor money to carefully compare the various options available. In such a situation, the experiences of others facing the same problems become invaluable. By learning from the mistakes and successes of others, one does not have to reinvent the wheel. Further, the rapidly changing nature of ICTs means that continuous innovations and availability of information can confuse the picture. In such a dynamic environment, opportunities to learn from one’s own experiences and to share the experiences of others become an important means to strengthen respective knowledge bases.

Five years ago, infoDev and IICD acknowledged how important experiences and lessons learned are in the field of ICTs for development by agreeing to partner to support the ICT Stories Project. This year, the Global Knowledge Partnership (GKP) is joining infoDev and IICD in this effort. GKP will bring a number of elements to the mix, including a new knowledge product on ICT Stories and a cash award for the story most strongly illustrating a project contributing to poverty alleviation.

Collection of stories
Knowledge is generated throughout the entire course of a project. The ICT Stories objective is to capture the learning process that accompanies the introduction and implementation of ICTs in a project in exemplary stories. These stories describe good practices and lessons learned from contributors' experiences.

The collected stories are stored in a database on a joint website (www.iicd.org/stories) and available to anybody interested in projects with ICT components. The ICT Stories deal with a range of problems and opportunities and with a variety of actors, project sizes, objectives, target groups and regions. By means of a single keyword search one can retrieve a collection of stories from a number of different projects, all discussing a single issue. The readers could then learn about those experiences and contact the project implementer if they wish.

Annual competition
To kick-off ICT Stories and to motivate story owners to share their knowledge, IICD and infoDev launched an annual competition. This year, the annual awards ceremony will be held at the ICT4D platform as part of the WSIS event in December 2003. An internationally acclaimed ICT Stories jury selects the winning stories from a growing database. Our expert panel of judges selects winning stories based on guidelines jointly formulated by the three organisations. These guidelines are as follows:

The project:

• involves important issues in the field of ICT and development;
• uses ICT in a new way: it may use state-of-the-art technology; basic ICTs in a creative way, or a combination of ICT and traditional media;
• has a significant effect on the sector it is applied to;
• serves as a model for other initiatives;
• story gives a background of the project and describes the incentives for creating it;
• story clearly specifies the challenges encountered during the project and describes how these challenges were overcome;
• story includes advice for others.

With the introduction of coordinating partner GKP, an additional criterion of the story’s link to poverty alleviation will be evaluated by the panel of judges. The annual contest winners participate in an international ICT event to present their story to the public. The awards for the ICT Stories competition have recently been renamed as the ‘Tony Zeitoun Awards’. Mr. Zeitoun passed away on May 5, 2003. He worked for the Policy Branch of CIDA as Senior Advisor, Knowledge for Development Initiative. There, he provided strategic policy advice to senior management, coordinated the development of CIDA’s strategy on Knowledge for Development through ICTs, and represented Canada/CIDA at major meetings of international telecommunications associations dealing with development issues. For many years, he represented Canada at infoDev’s donors meetings and he was a tireless supporter of the Global Knowledge Partnership (GKP) in the initial years. He strongly backed the ICT Stories competition as well.

More information
For more information about this partnership, please direct your queries to IICD's Partnerships Manager. Be sure to visit the websites of infoDev, IICD, GKP and ICT Stories to learn more about its activities in the field of ICTs for Development.