The Information for All Programme seeks to narrow the gap between the information rich and information poor, and so it is very concerned with access to information and ICTs at the community level, coordinating closely with UNESCO's community media activities.
UNESCO is working to network public and community libraries all over the world, turning them into gateways to information and facilities for open and flexible learning. The
UNESCO Network of Associated Libraries (UNAL) aims at encouraging public libraries to conduct information dissemination at grass-roots level, making appropriate use of information and communication technologies (ICTs).
More recently, UNESCO has been working to address the digital divide in the poorest communities of the developing world and in countries in transition, by promoting the use of ICTs at the community level and combining their potential with “traditional” mass communication media and community information centres. UNESCO launched in 1996, in cooperation with the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), a programme supporting
Multipurpose Community Telecentres (MCTs), community-owned platforms providing a wide range of information and informatics facilities and services for both commercial and development uses, building on the concepts of the community library and community learning centre. The MCT concept is compatible and complementary with the Community Multimedia Centre (CMC) model, which incorporates community radio, and, in many cases, UNESCO-supported telecentres are both CMCs and MCTs.
Local content is the expression and communication of a community’s knowledge that is relevant to the community’s situation and provides opportunities for the member of the community to interact and communicate with each other, expressing their own ideas, knowledge and culture in their own languages. UNESCO is thus supporting the development and production of
Local ICT Applications such as multimedia learning applications and digital libraries.
An
International Telecentre Resources site provides useful links and documentation for the application of ICTs at the community level.
