The training programme on Content Development for Multimedia was organized in Barangay Payatas (Quezon City), under the e-Knowledge Public Domain (eKPD) Project supported by UNESCO. Barangay Payatas is an urban poor village in Philippines with over 200,000 inhabitants, about 80 percent of which are informal settlers, making their living as scavengers, scrap dealers, hawkers, vendors and labourers.

The training enabled the participants to produce information tools on priority health concerns of their community and, in the same time, to learn the basics of computing.

To prepare their interactive materials, the participants conducted a rapid appraisal of the health situation in the area, documented actual health cases and gathered latest village health statistics. Because of their local context, the CD-ROMs produced are supposed to have greater impact on the Payatas residents. Part of these materials will be integrated in the e-Knowledge Public Domain website and professionally-produced CD-ROMs to be shared with about 100 community e-centres established in various poor municipalities of the country.

The eKPD Project seeks to promote greater access to public domain information, particularly on priority development areas such as health, small business, basic education, environment, etc. The pilot project, which started in late 2006, prioritises public health, including emergency and disaster management.

The Project has two components: development of a website based on the public domain information and production of interactive multimedia materials using local development issues. Selected community members receive ICT literacy training covering not only the use of computers but also content development, which is usually the missing element in ICT programmes. The need to address the 'content gap' in ICT projects has been emphasised by the World Summit on Information Society (WSIS) both at its Geneva and Tunis phases.

In addition to Payatas, the eKPD Project is also being tested in Eastern Visayas through the Regional Electronic Access to Communication for Health (REACH-EV), 'one-stop shop' that provides basic data services such as web browsing, e-mail and SMS, and serves as a databank on health emergencies in the region.

The eKPD Project is co-managed by the Philippine Commission on Information and Communications Technology (CICT), Asian Institute of Journalism and Communication, and Intel Microelectronics. The project managers believe that they have developed a model in the use of ICT for development that emphasises content as the most critical element. They also hope that the pilot projects can be scaled up in other marginalised communities in the near future.