Project FOCUS Launches Internet Café

Posted on 02/02/2010

Project FOCUS is partnering with local organizations in rural Southwest Uganda to launch an Internet Café, providing access to information and communication previously unavailable to residents of the region. The Café will also provide technology skills training, a revenue source for a local community-run primary school, and allocate space and tools for the production of creative multi-media projects.

Web access provides communities with the opportunity to improve social welfare, and claim their voice in the global conversation on strategies for rural development. With this service, the local populace will benefit from direct links to job, educational, weather, and health information, as well as more efficient markets for produce and products.

Former U.N. Secretary General Kofi Anan warns of the danger of excluding poor rural communities from the Internet: "People lack many things: jobs, shelter, food, healthcare and drinkable water. Today, being cut off from basic telecommunications services is a hardship almost as acute as these other deprivations, and may, indeed reduce the chances of finding remedies to them."

In a time when most development strategies are being created and authorized from behind desks in Washington D.C., the Internet Café initiative is a culmination of a running partnership between Project FOCUS and local service organization ICOD (Integrated Community Efforts for Development) aimed at implementing community-lead, sustainable development projects in the southwestern district of Lyantonde, Uganda, a region that continues to be heavily affected by the HIV/AIDS pandemic.

Project FOCUS, a Chicago-based non-profit, works in a cyclical process, beginning with creative projects that foster collaboration and encourage community members to exercise their voice through artistic mediums, that then move into exhibitions of the Ugandan artwork to engage U.S. audiences and personalize the complex social-issues faced in Uganda; and finally return to the community with resources garnered from the exhibition to implement a locally---driven development initiative addressing the material needs of the community. The cycle comes full-circle back to the respective artists, advocating for empowerment and self-reliance, and creating a platform to begin the process again.

Looking forward, Project FOCUS and ICOD see this service as a financial and physical foundation for change in the region, as the Internet Café holds significance both for direct participants and the broader economy. The two organizations have their sights set on supporting growth and stability in the key sectors of community development --- education, health, agriculture, economic --- and will continue to champion locally developed solutions to local challenges.

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