UNESCO 2005 guide to involving volunteers in telecenters/telecentres

The UNESCO Multimedia Training Kit (MMTK) was created by and for UNESCO in 2005 to provide trainers in telecentres/community technology centiers (CTCs), community media organizations, multimedia community centers, civil society organizations and anyone in a community ICT4D initiative. It covered what was then viewed as essential for CTC staff, whether paid employees or unpaid volunteers, managing such initiatives. That includes Free and Open Source Software (FOSS), email tools, fundraising recommendations, online community management and more. The kit was set up in modules and targeted these initiatives in developing countries in particular. The MMTK materials were intended for mediated use by trainers in face-to-face workshops.

The entire kit was available at this URL (which can still be found at the Internet Wayback Machine): http://www.itrainonline.org/itrainonline/mmtk/. The kit was also distributed by CD. 

While I was a program manager at the United Nations Volunteers programme in what was then called the E-Volunteering Unit, directing the UN's Online Volunteering service and helping to manage the United Nations Information Technology Service (UNITeS), I was charged with developing the section of the kit regarding involving volunteers. As I noted in the final draft for the kit:

many successful CTCs attribute their achievements in communities not just to the technologies they make available, but to the personal assistance they provide in using those technologies. For many CTCs, there is only one sustainable way to provide substantial levels of personal assistance: involving volunteers.

Below are the materials I developed for UNESCO's MMTK. Note that in converting the 2005 files to versions that can be read today, some formatting problems were created, usually regarding bullets. In addition, note that most of the URLs referred to in any of these materials are outdated.

The workshop for trainers to lead is broken down into seven sections:

• Part 1: Introduction & Why
• Part 2: Defining Volunteer Assignments
• Part 3: Keys to Success
• Part 4: The Volunteer Manager (handout)
• Part 5: Recruitment
• Part 6: Other resources (handout)
• Part 7: Conclusion

Here are the documents:

• Involving Volunteers: Essential for Community Technology Initiatives. Module Narrative. Link will download a PDF.


• Involving Volunteers: Essential for Community Technology Initiatives. Slide show/presentation. This was developed for trainers to use in their own trainings. Link will download a PDF.


• Trainers' notes. Link will download a Microsoft Office document.


• Glossary. Link will download a Microsoft Office document.


• Case Study: Volunteers Contributing to MDGs: #3 Promote Gender Equality and Empower Women. India. Link will download a Microsoft Office document.


• Case Study: Volunteers Contributing to MDG: #6: Combat HIV/AIDS, Malaria and Other Diseases. Vietnam. Link will download a Microsoft Office document.


• Case Study: Volunteers Contributing to MDG: #6: Combat HIV/AIDS, Malaria and Other Diseases . Kenya. Link will download a Microsoft Office document.


• Handout for training session. Link will download a Microsoft Office document.


• List of support materials/resources for volunteers using, or wanting to use, the service. Link will download a Microsoft Office document.


• Additional resources. Resources to find further resources to support volunteer-involvement activities and to find more detailed information about very specific scenarios. Link will download a Microsoft Office document.

Also see:

• United Nations ICT4D Initiatives
  Various United Nations offices have launched initiatives to promote the use of computers, feature phones, smart phones and various networked devices in development and humanitarian activities, to promote digital literacy and equitable access to the "information society," and to bridge the digital divide. This web page is my effort to track UN Tech4Good / ICT4D programs, from the oldest through 2016. My goal is to primarily to help researchers, as well as to remind current UN initiatives that much work regarding ICT4D has been done by various UN employees, consultants and volunteers for more than 15 years (and perhaps longer?).
   
  
• Short-term Assignments for Tech Volunteers
  There are a variety of ways for mission-based organizations to involve volunteers to help with short-term projects relating to computers and the Internet, and short-term assignments are what are sought after most by potential "tech" volunteers. But there is a disconnect: most organizations have trouble identifying such short-term projects. This is a list of short-term projects for "tech" volunteers -- assignments that might takes days, weeks or just a couple of months to complete.

• One(-ish) Day "Tech" Activities for Volunteers
  Volunteers are getting together for intense, one-day events, or events of just a few days, to build web pages, to write code, to edit Wikipedia pages, and more. These are gatherings of onsite volunteers, where everyone is in one location, together, to do an online-related project in one day, or a few days. It's a form of episodic volunteering, because volunteers don't have to make an ongoing commitment - they can come to the event, contribute their services, and then leave and never volunteer again. Because computers are involved, these events are sometimes called hackathons, even if coding isn't involved. This page provides advice on how to put together a one-day event, or just-a-few-days-of activity, for a group of tech volunteers onsite, working together, for a nonprofit, non-governmental organization (NGO), community-focused government program, school or other mission-based organization - or association of such.

• San Francisco Women of the Web (SFWOW): A History
  In the 1990s, various associations sprung up all over the USA to support women using the Internet as a primary part of their work - or who wanted to. These associations created safe, supportive, content-rich, fun spaces, both online and in real spaces, for women to talk about their tech and online-related work, to ask questions, and to learn from each other. One of the best well-known at the time, San Francisco Women of the Web, chose 25 women in 1998, in 1999, in 2000 and in 2001, recognizing them with their Women of the Web award. To help highlight some of the many women who played important roles in the 1990s Internet - which I consider the "early days" - as well as some truly pioneering tech projects that laid the groundwork for the success of so many initiatives today, I have reproduced this list of Top25 Women on the Web on my own site.