The United Nations in the Twenty-first Century Global Outreach: Empowering Village Voices.

"I am the land...yellow, brown, red, tan, green, and gold...why do you abuse me...If you treat me with kindness, I will flourish...And give back in kind..."

Nature Kicks Back

Alice Adarkwa Dadzie, Environmental Protection Agency 

Accra, Ghana, October 1999

We stood, at the close of a Cape Coast conference on protecting the rich fragile coastline of Ghana, listening to the Information Director at Ghana's Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) read her poetry, conveying critical content on integrated coastal zone management. We were Governments, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), the private sector, universities, international organizations, and communities and villages. My role was to introduce distance learning, develop public awareness and build capacity for change.

Alice Dadzie is the first woman graduate of the University of Ghana, Cape Coast, a long-time teacher and now Information Director at EPA. She is a commanding presence and held us spellbound. She is planning a television-and-radio broadcast series on the environment. She has instinctively engaged in distance learning--learning in a different place from teaching, using multiple forms of communications media. She began with teaching, raising more than 20 "adopted" children, with devotion to the land that belonged in some ways, she felt, to her, to Ghana, to West Africa, to Earth.

Integrated coastal zone management, affecting agriculture, fishing, energy, commerce, small industry health and sanitation, requires the wide support which Alice can mobilize. Outreach within Ghana and other developing nations is being extended by information and communication technologies. "Global outreach", using new communications technologies that transcend borders and regions, now transforms development.

"Global outreach" is distance learning that uses the explosion in information technology for outreach. It is delivery of education, health, environment, public information, and commercial and other services, using a combination of communications tools which range from print, radio, television, telephone, to computers, CD-ROMs, cassettes, television/video-conferencing and the Internet, and which depend on the user--leading to multi-media applications.

New communications technologies change user and supplier relationships. First, they create and extend access. The global superhighway is spurred by deployment of fibre optic lines and satellite channel capacity that offers worldwide coverage. Communication and information services no longer need be limited to places with phone wires and/or electricity. Children and adults in low-income areas--in remote parts of their countries with limited access to education, health or other services--now have real possibilities for socio-economic development. Second, the new technologies empower the stakeholder, the community, the villager--the user.

Successful global outreach outcomes depend upon user response. The user dominates decisions on communications media, programme content, instructional design, technical support and financial sustainability.

Bringing the local community into global knowledge and applications, or bringing global environmental concerns into the community, has been extraordinarily enhanced by information and communications technologies. Remedy for the deteriorating Ghanaian coast lies in community action, relying on the integrated coastal zone management imperative framed in Agenda 21 of the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development and the Framework Convention on Climate Change. Internet support is being mobilized at government and university levels, where environmental database work and curriculum development are ongoing. A systematic multi-media approach to training and capacity-building will build on the important start that has been made.

The fulcrum of the global outreach lever in Ghana is the coastal village. By empowering the villagers--through communications outreach, appropriately designed messages, adapted media technologies, technical support and informed trainees--the villagers improve their land and living conditions.

Moreover; a coastal village of 13,000 has defined its development needs: improved methods of fishing and fish processing, youth employment, training for women, health and sanitation facilities, radios and a community resource centre. The development of community learning centres is being undertaken for villages such as Moree and Shamaa.

The true explosion in information technology and global communication has created unprecedented opportunities for development. Will low-income countries share in the new and expansive opportunities? Will development "take off" as we move into the new millenium?

Partnering will be key to success in global outreach to developing countries in two distinct ways. The first form of partnership underpins Alice Dadzie's poetry. "I am the land ... why do you abuse me?" she writes, understanding that effective coastal zone protection means outreach to coastal communities, to the villagers of Shamaa and Moree.

The second form is among international partners, including international organizations, NGOs, business, academia and Governments. Poetry again expresses the need: "Of facts ... they lie unquestioned, uncombed wisdom enough to leech us of our ill is daily spun; but there exists no loom to weave it into fabric?"

The United Nations is actively forging new partnerships to seize the moment for development. The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP)-funded Sustainable Development Network, founded in 1992 and now in 40 countries, has partnered with business, foundations, NGOs and Governments to provide access to developing countries. The Working Group on Informatics, established in 1994, has reinforced the United Nations capabilities in information technology use and given support to its Member States.

Recently, UNDP has drawn into close partnership with the World Bank and has established NetAid, with the support of Cisco Systems and others, to build community awareness and support for the work of the United Nations worldwide. A major United Nations Foundation and Fund for International Partnerships Board was established in 1998, when Ted Turner provided the United Nations with $1 billion in funding for children's health, women and population, and the environment.

Recently, a symposium was held by the World Bank on "The New Networked Economy; What's at Stake for the Developing World?" On the second day, an innovative group of development, Internet and telecommunications experts summed up their views on "leap-frogging knowledge gaps and connecting those at the far end of the digital divide". In the words of Ruben Ricupero, Secretary-General of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, quoting one of the founding fathers of cybernetics: "To be informed is to be free?" He went on to say, "... to be free is to be able to make choices ... to choose, one needs to be aware of what the choices are their respective costs and benefits ... this is the best explanation of the role of information.

Empowering village voices.

Mary Oakes Smith serves on the Board of the United Nations Fund for International Partnerships. As Manager of the Industry, Energy, Telecommunications, Africa Region, World Bank, she was sponsored as Learning and Leadership Fellow in Information Technology and Distance Learning in 1996/1997 to develop strategies and applications in distance learning for low-income countries. She is currently Managing Partner at GlobalMed, which supplies essential medicines to developing countries, using new information systems, and head of Oakes International, advising on distance learning applications.