News - Expanding the narrative on community-centred connectivity initiatives

Editorial

Expanding the narrative on community-centred connectivity initiatives

Source By APC News
20 hours ago

In a context of a persistent connectivity gap affecting unserved or underserved communities, a wide range of initiatives have emerged with diverse strategies to achieve digital inclusion. These efforts to provide access to technology in areas where connectivity is absent or inadequate invite us to question what defines an initiative as being community-centred in its approach to bridging the digital divide. To address this question, the Local Networks (LocNet) initiative reflected on what makes community-centred connectivity initiatives different from others, while both focusing and expanding on the diversity of approaches encompassed within the scope of experiences usually referred to as “community networks”. These belong to a wide spectrum that includes initiatives with a range of different organisational forms and ownership and business models, all of them aimed at achieving meaningful connectivity for communities. In this special edition of our newsletter, we are launching two publications that gather the results of reflection on these questions. The first of them is the Principles for community-centred connectivity initiatives, a set of 13 statements that capture the ethos of community-centred connectivity, and define what makes these initiatives different from others. The second publication is the Typology of community-centred connectivity initiatives, developed through a combination of compiling direct experiences and research by the LocNet initiative to identify models that have emerged in different parts of the world – from community-run networks to public services to social enterprises – and which are classified according to a set of 11 characteristics identified during the development of the typology. Through a participatory process that included a survey, online consultations, a face-to-face session and collaborative discussions, the principles and typology should be considered documents in dialogue for thinking through setting up a community-centred connectivity initiative. While the typology is aimed at mapping the complexities of different models so that communities are aware of the potential options available, the principles offer a considered qualitative account of issues to consider when deciding which model to implement. They both highlight community-centred connectivity initiatives as complementary to the internet access offered by commercial service providers and state-sponsored public access networks, underlining the social value that distinguish them from traditional stakeholders in the ecosystem. Far from being rigid guidelines, these principles and typology are designed as dynamic and adaptable tools that can evolve together with contexts and insights. These publications also aim to achieve a clearer communication between communities, partners, donors and regulators and, by contributing to this, to strengthen a broader movement for sustainable, inclusive and meaningful access to communication technologies for all. Welcome to this 76th monthly round-up of developments impacting your local access networks and community-based initiatives. We wish you a pleasant and healthy end of the year and a good beginning to the new year, in which we will meet again, working together for an inclusive and meaningful digital experience for communities.Illustration: Cathy Chen. Routing for Communities podcast Once again we invite you to visit our Routing for Communities podcast and learn more about some of the experiences that nurtured the reflection leading to the principles and typology of community-centred connectivity initiatives that we are launching in this special edition. If you still haven’t had the chance to listen to them, take advantage of the end-of-the-year holidays to hear about these communities' experiences in their own voices. The Routing for Communities podcast highlights the perspectives of those who work to expand access to technology and connectivity to those previously unserved or underserved. We hope these stories inspire and motivate more actions for promoting community-centred connectivity initiatives and creating the conditions required for them to flourish, grow and remain sustainable. The Routing for Communities podcast is available on this page, as well as on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. The first season features 12 episodes, describing experiences of communities from around the world. Community networks learning repository The repository is a collective online space to store and exchange resources that can be useful in training processes, focused on materials made for and by community networks.In the context of this year's edition of the Internet Governance Forum (IGF), we invite you to consult resources related to internet governance and community connectivity. The repository hosts materials that gather the outcomes of the last IGF in 2023, such as the official output report of the Dynamic Coalition on Community Connectivity, and a video of a workshop that focused on “Community Networks: Digital Sovereignty and Sustainability”, which was also presented by this Dynamic Coalition.As usual, we remind you of the invitation to share in this platform any resource in any language that you or your organisation have developed for the capacity building of communities for their digital inclusion.

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