|
|
|
 |
University of North London Development Management and Relational Skills Outreach Approach 'Outreach' is a much practised art, an art which has largely been unaccompanied by a strong analytical or theoretical treatment, at least within the British context. In the mid 1980s, Len Holmes and Margaret Grieco, then of the London Economic Policy Unit, now of the University of North London Business School, were part of one of the Greater London Council's final experiments in popular planning - the Charlton Training Centre. Len Holmes had previously worked on the community skilling and employment initiative at Stonebridge. At the heart of these experiments were the 'theory' and practice of outreach. Margaret and Len's experience of outreach as it was practised in this context was a negative one though both believed that an alternative and more successful form of outreach could have been practised. Their view was that better tuned outreach practices would enable those communities being 'outreached' in respect of the delivery of a service, in this case skills and leadership training for black youths and for women, to take over the 'outreach' tasks themselves and eliminate the need for full time external specialists. 'Experts' should be working themselves out of jobs by transferring skills in any particular location and not become permanent features of popular planning organisations. Over the years, both Len and Margaret have sought to work within an 'outreach approach' or framework and have come to realise that the outreach approach requires theoretical strengthening not least because the opportunities afforded for expanding the scope of outreach activities through the new information technologies. Historically, outreach involved the delivery of services by professionals to the marginalised sectors of society through the use of the existing social networks of those communities or by building social networks to service those communities. Person-to-person spread of information is a key feature of the traditional approach to outreach whether it is practised in the low income communities of the high income countries or in the rural areas of the low income countries. The new information technologies can greatly expand the 'outreach' capacity of the delivery of social, health, educational and civic services. Within the frame of Global Learn Day II, we are trying to develop protocols and understandings which work towards capturing the expanded 'outreach' capacity of the new information technology. A first capacity of the new information technology outreach approach is that outreach 'clients' can readily transmit messages back into the centre of operations of resource providers. By streaming, video materials of clients' experiences, views and needs over the Internet into training, health, educational or other resourced organisations, for the first time outreach has the opportunity to reach back into these organisations to effect change. Outreach can now be reciprocated through inreach. A second capacity of the new information technology outreach approach is that it increases the ability of clients to match resources, needs and personnel amongst themselves without the active intervention of external organisers. The matching or brokering capabilities of the new technology will allow members of a community with spare time or vehicle capacity to locate and assist other members of their community who need transport to hospitals for example. A match can readily be made between a community volunteer and an individual in need of support through fairly simple booking and bulletin board technologies. A third capacity of the new information technology approach to outreach is its asynchronicity. Women typically experience task and time overload in their days due to their multiple tasks - home based information technologies permit women to communicate with the external world in the many fragments and unsociable hours at which their time comes free. Health and educational outreach services can be provided for example to single mothers through the new information technology at home with benefits both to state and single mother and her children alike.
What do we need to make a new information technology outreach approach? The answer is inexpensive home based networked information terminals - in effect community intranets. Whilst this may seem a radical social policy step within the United Kingdom, community nets have begun to develop elsewhere in the world. On our Global Learn Day II site, we begin to explore the demand for such developments and the benefits of such an approach within the context of North London. The benefits of such an approach, though modified to the provision of terminals at the village level rather than at the household level, for Africa and other development contexts would be great. |