Paper by : Agnes Irwanti(presented in Asean Regional Conference on Womenomic
and
The 13th ACWO General Assembly, Manila Hotel)
Introduction
Unemployment and poverty in many developing countries are multi dimensional problematical. These problem mostly influenced by lack of human and natural resources, community access to productive resources, employment opportunity, supporting of potential culture, knowledge and Technology. One of the approaching to cope with the problem is to make empowerment of the society. Society is stimulated to aware and ready to improve their quality of life by exploring and developing their inner potential and their environment, strengthening their best ability and also to provide the right protection in certain aspect to avoid exploitation and mistreatment on them.
So, the right making of empowerment is not to treat the society as an object but to involve their participation actively in development and effort of increasing quality of life of the society.
Women as part of the society certainly have important role in economic development of every nation. So the program of women empowerment become very relevant and directly tied to the effort of overcoming unemployment and poverty. Women are required to involve in the program, sounding what they want and have the strategic role in economic development which will push accountability and will accelerate economic growth of a country.
Related to the subject above, Information and Communication Technology become a must in supporting the acceleration of economic growth. Information flow and communication speed can improve efficiency which will affect to the productivity and cost efficiency.
Global market become the main factor that cannot be avoided paralel with the evolution of Information and Communication Technology which one of it is the Internet. Internet access and digital technology for women as government employee, business women or women of NGO (Non Government Organization) who live in big city is not a new thing anymore.
To communicate with other colleges either overseas or in domestic can be done fastly and easy by sending an e-mail or Chating via YM (Yahoo Messenger) or Skype. Even most of the information can be searched through internet browsing. Supremacy of women which used to do multi tasking is very benefited with this technology as a form of efficiency. Contrary, this kind of information technology is rarely known and used by most of women in remote area in Indonesia or even in big cities whether local government employee, women of NGO or business women.
All of these are a big homework for government of Indonesia. The digital divide which always as an attractive topic in ICT world become wider as we exploring to the remote area or small cities. This condition certainly affect to the economic of scale, because this connected to work efficiency, access to get the information, business opportunity and easyness of communication, etc.
Commitment of Ministry for Women Empowerment
Increasing Women Capacity in ICT is the program from Ministry for Women Empowerment as a kind of government caring regarding Gender Digital Divide in Indonesia. This program is the education of ICT for women to know, learn and to implement ICT technology among business, workplace and their daily life.
The program of Increasing Women Capacity in ICT held by Ministry for Women Empowerment is not only kind of argument/brainstorming that can not be measured their degree of achievement but also represent the real program training for the audience with making use of personal computer and internet connection for the audience respectively.
This program except having the function of increasing Women Capacity in ICT, also to manage digital divide to support goverment program regarding e-Government.
Coordinating with several Ministries and Goverment Bodies, the Ministry of Women Empowerment starting to support the provinces which are implementing the telecenter as tools for the society to learn and optimize the ICT.
Why Internet?
Internet is a global scale of network from modern communication and information technology which is very usefull in connecting human activity and interest in all of the world. Even in virtual world, this technology has many advantages for us. For instance, to communicate with friends, relations, colleges, business partners or everyone in all of Indonesia even all of the world in easy, cheap and fast.
With only have eagerness and capability to use it, we can easily search for a huge of data and information to support our work or business, getting information/national or overseas news, searching sponsor or supporting capital for the business, to get partner profile even our business competitor upto gathering cook recipes or how to handle household. Internet also can be used to extend friends network and business, even can be used to explore knowledge about every information (articles), spreadsheet, voice, photo and video in many aspect such us health, finance, management, business, etics, and all of the information about hooby, life style, mode, religion, etc.
Of course, we have to smart to use it, because not of every internet content is use full. Internet content tend tobe very free and cannot be controled or handled by anyone, so there are possibility that we might be trapped in negative material or content such us pornography, gamble, sadism, racialism and even infiltration of our data by other person (Hackers)
Moreover, with many bad programs such us virus, worm, Trojan horse, spyware, etc that can be harmed, erasing or steal our data in our computer up to the attack of garbage e-mail (spam), cheating, privacy violation by anybody through internet. Back to us, with the enough knowledge about all of the aspect about internet and also supporting with our maturity and wisdom in choosing or collect the good and bad information, we can optimize the internet for the positif matters and minimize the negative impact in order to get the advantage of internet technology safely.
By knowing internet and the advantages, hopefully the government plan of workshop training audience can use this kind of technology usefully. The other workshop material such as creating the e-mail address and personal Blog can provide benefit to the audience to have access directly to global market,globally distributed work and global knowledges.
Telecentre
The commitment of Indonesian Government in implementing e-Government Program, aligned and paralel with the e-Development program done by local authority which one of it is the development of telecentre. The development of this telecenter are the effort to increase society capability in ICT, also as an instrument where the informations are interchanged by using many kind of communication device.
Content builded by data collecting system, in this telecentre has the capability to provide the acurate information. Meaning able to fulfill the 5R criteria, which is Right information with Right quality, given at Right quantity to the Right person at the Right time.
In here, the ICT basic tools are needed to build the generic telecentre, such us:
Computer and internet access
Standard Peripheral, id est: printer, scanner, external harddisk and network (LAN)
Training room and community meeting.
Supporting device such as LCD, VCD,DVD, projector, audio tape
Supporting activity device for profesional business, 1 unit notebook, 1 unit telp/fax, camera digital.
This telecentre generic appliances combine with high dedicated organizer will create a multipurpose community telecentre (MTC). And with the expanding population of MTC in the community will stimulate the forming MTC Networking which acts as collective learning media for everybody. The networking acts as a part of more extensive network, so that the information line becomes richer and creates extensive distributed knowledge.
Through the activity of usage and extension of the telecentre, ICT can be used to develop knowledge and competency for the increase of competitive power for Small Medium Industry or Small Medium Business for community. ICT is used so that people can access knowledge sources from the internet, also they can use it for their business transactions. The benefit of ICT will always be combined with other communication tools (printed leaflet, communication board, local radio transmission and specific local cultural program). The aim is to facilitate individual or group needs so that they can develop their business which can escalate their economic scale.
The scope of activities in the telecentre comprise of:
1. The supply of technology package
Software supply, whether for business application with generic characteristic such as finance software, or certain industry with specific characteristic such as batik design planning software.
2. Training to have ability to access knowledge
People through community development training will be trained to be able to search information sources or knowledge that they need, whether from this country or from abroad.
3. Training to use ICT for business
People will be trained through ICT training, to use ICT for business needs, whether for application of supplied software, or for doing business interaction through email, e-commerce, or other internet application.
4. Training to enhance organization
Training needs to be given to support the telecentre optimalization as mentioned above. The Ministry of Women Empowerment participates to give workshop for women, through program for enhancement of women capacity in ICT.
Workshop Implementation and Output
The program of Ministry for Women Empowerment is enhancement of women capacity in ICT, conducted in 15 cities in Indonesia, through giving workshop for women with very basic material: internet introduction and its usage, how to access internet, surfing/browsing to get information, making e-mail address and making blog.
The cities mentioned above are as follows: Jambi, Banjarbaru, Lampung, Wonosobo, Banten, Kota Pekalongan, Pekalongan, Manado, Mataram, Sragen, Sidoardjo, Pontianak, Cilegon, Sukabumi, Gorontalo.
The training is participated by 50 person for every city, consist of government employees, women organization and local business women. Each participant operates one computer connected with internet so that they can operate and applied directly.
There, the participants can learn and access internet directly, make e-mail address, send letters to each other. The participants are also guided to understand how technology can facilitate them to communicate in a fast way by sending e-mail between themselves, so that they realize that they don’t have to bother with conventional letter anymore.
The workshop participants also enjoy session about how to make Blog, where they can pour out idea, give opinion, even promote their business. Until this article is written (10 November 2008), workshop has been held in 7 cities: Pekalongan District, Pekalongan City, Pontianak, Banjar Baru, Sragen, Sidoardjo and Manado.
As a speaker and lecturer along the roadshow, I have been witnessing the enthusiasm of the participants during the workshop. The availability of information through internet made the participants satisfying themselves to have the information that they wanted.
Even I recently received information from the former audience of the training origin from Sragen city which also SMEs (Small Medium Enterprise) of Organic Rice informing that her business has already received order from Japan. The other SMEs enterpreneur of batik handmade in Pekalongan city also sell her product to other cities and even abroad by using the ICT.
Here can be seen in reality that the program of Increasing Women Capacity in ICT has a capability to increase working efficiency thus increasing productivity and helping local business women go to global market. And at the end can give positif contribution to national economic growth.
REFERENCES 1. ICTWatch, http://www.ictwatch.com/2. Asosiasi Pengusaha jasa Internet Indonesia (APJII), http://www.apjii.or.id/3. Kementrian Negara Pemberdayaan Perempuan, http://www.menegpp.go.id/4. Asian Pacific Women’s Information Network Center (APWINC), http://www.women.or.kr/5. Empowering Women Network, Inc. (EWN), http://www.empoweringwomen.net/6. Empowering Women Magazine, http://www.empoweringwomen.com/7. Situs Perempuan, http://www.perempuan.com/.8. DetikNET, http://www.detiknet.com/9. XL, http://www.nyambungterus.com/10. Preotec Kids, http://www.protectkids.com/11. Spamhause, http://www.spamhause.org/12. Microsoft, http://www.microsoft.com/13. Google, http://www.google.com/14. Yahoo, http://www.yahoo.com/15. Wikipedia, http://www.wikipedia.org/
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