Capacity Building at Rural Internet Centres in Thailand

The National Broadcasting and Telecommunications Commission (NBTC) of Thailand is mandated to implement Universal Service Obligation (USO) for telecommunications/ICTs in Thailand. It has set up hundreds of USONETs (rural Internet centres) throughout the country and has a plan to establish more USONETs in the next three years. To further build human capacities at the USONETs, a call for local volunteers in Thailand will be made. A group of volunteers, called NBTC-ITU Volunteers (NIV), will be selected, trained and dispatched by NBTC and ITU to the rural USONETS in various locations in Thailand to provide onsite support to strengthen the capacities of these USONETS.

Out of 118 applications, 76 applications were called for interviews. Then the project selected 56 volunteers to join the programme in 2016. The volunteers were grouped into 20 teams and dispatched to 20 USONETs.

Volunteers were dispatched to the USONETs to build capacities on site for 40 days from 19 June to 28 July 2016. Activities carried out by the volunteers are as follows:

- Conducting a community needs assessment;

- Promoting the USONET;

- Training in IT courses (e.g. basic computer use, office applications, web development, photo/video editing, etc.) to USONET administrators and users/people of the community;

- Providing regular updates and reports to project team members about their activities, issues and challenges;

- Developing the USONET website;

- Developing video materials for IT training and for promoting the community;

- Building relationships and promoting the network of NIVs among the volunteers and USONET administrators as well as local authorities;

- Conducting non-IT activities to support the USONET as required or as deemed appropriate.