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May 2004 The Declaration of the 2800. La Ond@ Rural: Radio, New ICTs and Rural DevelopmentQuito, Ecuador
Organised by FAO, in cooperation with the Latin American Association for Radio Education (ALER – Asociación Latinoamericana de Educación Radiofónica) and the World Association of Community Radio Broadcasters (AMARC), La Ond@ Rural: Radio, New ICTs and Rural Development was a regional workshop held in Quito, Ecuador 20-22 April 2004. In the workshop's final document, the 89 participants from twenty countries recognised the expanding role of information and communication in rural development initiatives. However, they emphasised that "in order to be useful, information has to be available in the appropriate languages and formats and to be distributed via channels and media that are appropriate for and available to rural people." Broadcast radio was singled out as a particularly powerful tool for closing the digital divide, especially in rural areas. The workshop focused on three main themes: i) public policy and practices in rural broadcasting and telecommunication; ii) content for rural development, and iii) training, including both the training needs of rural communities in ICT use and the use of ICTs as a support for more traditional training initiatives. In addition to a number of specific recommendations related to the above themes, the declaration calls for the creation of the “Latin American Initiative on Communication for Rural Development”, to be known as La Ond@ Rural. Envisaged as an inter-institutional platform, this initiative will work with existing regional and national networks, training centres, research institutes and governments to focus attention on the specific information and communication needs of rural communities in the region. (The full text of the Declaration of the 2800 is available in Spanish)
Click here to view the document (html format) or here for pdf format (178 KB).
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