eTUKTUK - taking Kothmale a little further

Ben Grubb sent me an article he wrote about the eTUKTUK for an upcoming issue of the Telecentre Magazine, published by telecentre.org. I won’t steal anyone’s thunder by posting it here, but he also included some interesting links to online videos. A tuk-tuk is a motorised rickshaw or three-wheeled motorcycle, a popular form of transport in much of South and South East Asia. An eTUKTUK is (you guessed it) a tuktuk equipped with a computer and an internet connection, and Kothmale Community Radio’s eTUKTUK which is not only a mobile telecentre but also a mobile radio station (with it’s own low-power transmitter) and a remote broadcasting unit that send a signal via its CDMA connection back to Kotmale’s main transmitter for rebroadcast throughout the region.

The eTUKTUK not only provides a travelling internet and voice service for the community, but also helps the radio station keep in close touch with community members and activities. According to Ben, community members often request the eTUKTUK to visit and “provide coverage of religious and cultural gatherings and facilitate forums and workshops.”

The itinerant vehicle encourages staff from Kothmale to actively engage with their target audience while the narrowcasting and editing facilities enable programs and training to be conducted in a familiar environment that encourages broader participation. The community can play an active role in media creation and through the loudspeakers and multimedia projector, content can be narrowcast and verified by the community before being broadcast.

Ben also writes that the eTUKTUK is influencing Kothmale’s programming:

[It] has generated a new program format at Kothmale where the etuktuk community programs are compiled into an daily program broadcast between 7-8pm which also provides live link-ups with the etuktuk in the field.

There are some videos of the eTUKTUK site, but you’d better have a good connection to see them - especially the one at the top of the page, Creating Harmony in the Community, which weighs in at 123 megs.