"Developing a Sense-Making Methodology Framework for Collective Learning in Latin American Community Telecenter Assessment, by Michel Menou and Peter day. Paper presented at a non-divisional workshop held at the meeting of the International Communication Association, New York City, May 2005.



Some quotes:

- "History appears to be repeating itself in that the lessons of the early European telecenter movement do not appear to have been understood."

- "The institutional communities (international organizations, governments and major non-government organizations associated with them) pretend to offer 'best practices' based upon their particular view of telecenters financial sustainability."

- "As usual the views of the beneficiaries are hardly expressed in by themselves in the literature."

- "Most stories show that ICT are used, allowing communications or access to information not previously possible, and bring some immediate positive, or negative, outcomes. But does this actually point to the beginning of a transformation process that will lastingly change the fate of the people and that could not be arrived at through other means? And is ICT use the prime driver or is it only an enhancer of other key factors?"

- "Research results are hardly available to, or understandable by, the communities themselves and do not contribute to their decision making process while they feed into institutional policies. Research therefore tends to contribute more to the perpetuation of community domination than to their empowerment. Present monitoring and evaluation practices need to be transformed into community driven collective learning processes."

Menou and Day make extensive references to a "sense-making methodology" but didn't explain it much... need to investigate that...:)