03 December 2003

Bonn, Germany: In today’s world, inequalities often run deep between the North and the South. These include stark differences in the application of information and communication technology (ICT) for development. This rift is now commonly referred to as the digital divide – the imbalance that exists between the countries in the North where people use ICT on a daily basis and the others in the South who have little or no access. Hundreds of volunteers mobilized within universities, however, are now working to close the gap under an initiative managed by the United Nations Volunteers (UNV) programme.

This new model of development cooperation promoted by the United Nations Information Technology Service (UNITeS) allows volunteer students, professors and researchers to offer their services to countries of the South. Their task is to pass on their knowledge of ICT – for example, computer and Internet systems – to support local development.

Currently in Ecuador, Fulgencio Villescas, a Spanish student at the Autonomous University of Madrid, is using the Internet to distribute regular news from the Latin American Information Agency (ALAI) regarding the rights of women as citizens of Latin America. He is following up on the work carried out a few months earlier by another Spanish volunteer, Beatriz Sánchez, an economics student at the same university. Beatriz updated ALAI’s web site (http://www.alainet.org) and maintained an information portal (http://www.movimientos.org) where several social movements publish news, opinions and calls for action.

“Training in development is a real asset enabling you to succeed,” said José María Díaz Batanero, a volunteer in Honduras. “It is also necessary to be aware that you are bringing modern technology to a country that may not put it to significant use.” The Spanish student from the University of Grenade offers technical advice for a project to modernize and expand Honduras’ national telecommunications company, Hondutel. It is the largest telecommunications project in Central America involving a major investment in optical fibre to extend telephone service to rural areas. The volunteer equipped data-processing operators with tools allowing them to work better as a team. Specifically, he explained how they could plan and coordinate tasks, carry out work and store information on achievements and results. For José María, “this experience of working in Honduras where many poor people live ... is unique.”

Since 2000, university volunteers have been coordinated by the UNV programme within the University Volunteer Network. At the end of 2002, they included 170 young men and women representing 155 nationalities.

George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia (USA), was the first institution to join the university volunteer scheme through UNITeS in 2001. In early 2002, the Autonomous university of Madrid, which coordinates a network of 13 universities at the national level, also came on board. In October 2003, Japan’s Kwansei Gakuin University (KGU) based in Kobe became the first Asian institution of higher learning to join the network. Mexico’s University of Colima and Nigeria’s University of Benin are expected to sign on to the network soon.

University volunteers have so far shared their ICT skills in Albania, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Botswana, Ecuador, Honduras, India, Jordan, Mongolia, Senegal and Trinidad and Tobago. New projects are with being developed in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Indonesia, Kyrgyzstan, Madagascar and Senegal.

So far, 13 volunteers collaborated with seven institutions and organizations in Ecuador. The pioneer, Jacques Brace of Haiti, arrived in 2000, and created a web site where institutions in Ecuador and neighbouring Peru could follow regular progress of projects as part of a bilateral plan for frontier development. Later, Jennifer Page of George Mason University helped a political association of Ecuadorian women better present information on its web site, http://www.cpme.org.ec. Another American, Jabeh Peabody, created a web site for of the Agency for the Development of Enterprises (ADE) with contacts of organizations and institutions that offer contracts to companies in Ecuador’s southern Loja province.

American student Mathew Sebastian thinks ICT will “humanize globalization. He volunteered to develop a web site for Bosnia-Herzegovina’s bridge and highways department where contract proposals are published. “I have learned to seek and find technological solutions in a country of economic transition that I have come to know,” he said.

* UNITeS is an initiative announced in the UN Secretary General’s Millennium Report to stimulate and facilitate volunteer contributions to help bridge the digital divide. The UNITeS initiative works through the UN Volunteers programme.