Dear Noel Sorry for being late to reply. Physical arrangement of the computers in 5 locations based on the Centers' (CICs) own arrangements. They maintain these computers and in every center at least one is dedicated for info service. e-krishok is mainly a supporting product of ruralinfobd.com, so financial transaction through e-krishok not fixed yet. It is treated as a info customer gaining system; when a farmer become a member of the e-krishok, he tends to get info of his/her necessity from the centers where the center owner charges them a minimum amount for the info. The system we call is "MORE MEMBER> MORE INFO SEEK > MORE INCOME", and hence bring benefits to the center owner. And thus ICT related service need for farmers grows rapidly. Since no center can survive alone on the ICT info for agriculture, they have other services like e-mail, scanning, digital studio, composing etc. for fluent income generation. And beside those info service also makes them more valuable to the local farmers who are the member of e-krishok and hence user of the services offered by these centers. Both agriculture and Non-agriculture content charges are same in terms of income. But it is yet to be more synchronized with the service. regd remizius remi

Dear Noel (answering "I am interested in what you are doing with e krishok?"): Here I am sharing the brief of e-krishok activities: e-krishok has been launched to provide modern and up-to-date agro and non-agro based information (content) to the farmers in solve-and-share basis. This is the farmers' network where they will be able to solve any agro related problems through internet by visiting the website of ruralinfobd.com. For the convenience and benefit of the farmers the agro and non-agro content has been produced in native language "Bengali". The farmers can avail the information also over phone (and in near future through CallCenter). If they visit GPCIC (Communication Information Centre established by Grameen Phone, a leading cell phone company in Bangladesh.), they can receive the service. Vision of the e-krishok The main vision and mission of e-krishok network is to achieve social and financial up gradation of the rural people especially the farmers. Objective of the establishment of e-krishok • To provide urgent and necessary information to the farmers. • To build farmers' group so that information on agro based problems can be exchanged within the group. • To motivate visiting the GPCIC and hence to use the content of ruralinfobd.com. Benefit of the farmers of e-krishok • Farmers Obtain information on agro, non-agro, business plan, poultry, fisheries, education, health, governance and many other vital content through this website (ruralinfobd.com). • They can participate in training and awareness-building program, which are related to agriculture. • They can have the solution of agro and non-agro based problem over phone from expert panel of Win Inc. in emergency basis (and in near future through CallCenter). • They will be delivered necessary Training or workshop facilities offered by local Govt. office which may not availed by them. • They can get all kinds of assistance regarding ICT. • Develop own business network. • Workshop arrangement for the selected member farmers in collaboration with Govt. and non-govt. organizations for their livelihood improvement. So these are the activities and facilities we are offering through e-krishok. (answering other queries): And these five locations are mainly 5 GPCICs in 5 villages where there are 3-5 computers available for users and strictly at least one computer is dedicated for Information dissemination. Here operator communicates with the farmers about their problems and then they find out the solutions from the online database (Bengali). In case of unavailability of the particular content, the operator instantly inform the core group of ruralinfobd.com (i.e. Win Inc.) and we find out the solution from our archived database or from the help of expert panel members and deliver that to the operator sometime instantly or sometime within 1 or 2 days. Recently we are working on to set-up a "Call-Center" facility through which we can deliver the needed infos more instantly and accurately. That's it. Regd Remi IT Director Win Incorporate

Hi Noel P Magor Thanks for your concern inour e-krishok project ( and hence ruralinfobd.com). Yes, we have tapped 17 soruce in which BRRI is one from where we gather our information. It is now in regular updatation process. After that it will be hosted in the project site. And you will be glad to know that we have developed and modified our content to make it more accurate and farmer-friendly before delivering those. I guess you have your answers. regd

Hi Fred Weirowski, Greetings. Sorry for late reply. here is my answers: Is this project a typical public private partnership ( which model Joint venture?)? - It is a typical PPP. Which roles are playing the partner. who is leading the project?- Win Incorporate, a private firm leading the project; information dissemination by CIC (Community Information Center), a project of its partner organization GrameenPhone, one of the largest mobile phone companies in Bangladesh. I would be pleased to hear more about how is the remuneration of such a model. The private company Win Inc., is responsible for the most important content work, hosting and maintenance you wrote. How is the business model structured - means how Win Inc is earning money in this project in a long term perspecive?- We are gathering members (mostly farmers) through e-krishok project from locality (initially from 5 localities). They have been offered to have necessary information related to their work and also initiating a selection process to pick-up some good farmers to give Training (agri related) from a government proposed institute, almost FREE OF COST which can improve them in some way. We are also planning to do monthly or bi-monthly workshop/gathering to share views among members of e-krishok in information necessity perspective. Through these initiatives we are expecting to collect a huge numbers of members for e-krishok who will be our Brand Ambassador for our delivered content. And it is obvious for information they will visit those CICs frequently. Initially we are not charging CICs for delivered information. But after 2/3 months we are going to impose some nominal charge per center in monthly basis, which may become one of the earning points from such a model. Which role is playing the public site - is there any support from government per example in financial forms or by delivering information content, or in other form? - As stated earlier, there is a involvement of Govt. in the farmers' training process. And the content we are delivering to the centers has also connection with Govt. body. Need to mention that, in the proposed monthly or bi-monthly workshop/gathering, some Local Govt. official (like Agricultural Extention dept.) will be present to validate the process. Is the information content oriented to agriculture farmers or are there opportunities also for other branches? This, because I'm interested in information dissemination for the aquaculture sector.- We are delivering contents on Agriculture, Non-agro product (like candle making, yard gardening etc.), New Business Ideas (like pottery, medicinal plant nursery, commercial flower production etc) and Citizen Services (like education, health, culture, general health etc) to these centers. So any member can take any of this info as per their need. And we have also developed fisheries content that would cover the "aquaculture sector" that you mentioned. cheers!

Thanks Benin for visiting the site. Primarily it has been done to serve the rural farmer of Bangladesh. Necessary information is being delivered from some pilot project spot called Community Information Center (CIC), a venture of the Bangladesh's largest Mobile phone company GrameenPhone. Since the information is purely targeted for rural community, it was obvious to made up the site in Native language "Bangla". Thats why it is in that language. It is in pilot phase. Upon its success, we are planning to serve at least the with the introductory content in English also soon. As a part of the process Win Incorporate (www.winbd.net), a private business entity, is doing the necessary fact-finding, Need assessment, content development as per requirement, hosting & maintenance of the site. You will be very glad to know that the project is now achieving its result partially. We have conducted some field assessment few days back and found that a numbers of rural farmers are seeking their needed infos and some of them have already taken advantage of the process. And they are happy to have such kind of services through CIC. We are now planning to serve them through CallCenters, in joint venture with another entity in Bangladesh to serve them in better way. regd.

Hi Its Remi again from Win Incorporate, Bangladesh. Responsing to Manish's query, I am attaching here my views: [color=red]• What are the challenges in making "public" information available through private channels and what are the ways to overcome those? I observed these challenges: 1. Lack of Awareness on information dissemination process: From our field experience, we found that farmers in some locality are not aware well enough about the ICT services at the centers. Sometimes they also don't have the clear idea on how to bring their problems and take the solutions from centers. This should be resolved; otherwise PPP in e-agriculture perspective may not result as expected. 2. Lack of knowledge of the center entrepreneur about the contents in hand: Sometimes the center owner (or the operator) does not have the clear idea about the information they have in their hand. This may because of the lack of interest in this activity due to lower profit (sometime none). They needed to be encouraged in financial and social perspective to brain-storm the content they have and to disseminate those to the beneficiaries (farmer). 3. Information accessibility: In content development process sometimes the access to specific types of public info, such as the video clips content, up-to-date text content is restricted or it become hard-nut-to-crack situation. It results in the absence of HIGHLY DYNAMIC quality in the content. It should be resolved. [color=red]• How can content be best developed, updated and authenticated, and delivered to the intended beneficiaries? I think content development, updating and authentication process is described well enough by Kashfia Ahmed. But I have to add something in the delivery mechanism. This can be done in four ways: A. Through PC-internet-website at centers: Here "Content" is hosted in the "Internet", and it can be obtained through "PC" (here at GPCIC) with the help of "website" (here ruralinfobd.com). So this "3-tie" should be maintained smoothly with redundant backup internet connectivity facility. b. Through Audio-visual KIOSK (touch screen driven multimedia software) at centers: Beside the conventional "3-tie" system, KIOSK can be introduced to disseminate the info more user-friendly. With this farmers can get their info from touch-screen KIOSK without the help of the operator and it will make more impact on them. Multimedia software can be developed with the existing content to meet this necessity. As we know pictorial information has more impact than textual, so it can make this project much better than the usual. c. Through CallCenters (cell phone/land phone): Since cell phone has become the more popular device which even an illiterate individual can operate, it can be bind up with Call-Center to deliver the information services instantly. This can make a win-win situation for both the center owner and the user. d. Through hard copy: Beside these methods, hard copy of the needed information with colorful illustration can be produced and delivered at minimum cost to the farmers (like insecticide booklet, pesticide booklet, crop-chart etc.) which will help them instantly solve any related problem mentioned here. Individual farmer may be uneducated but any one of the family members can help them to find out their answers from these publications. [color=red]• What are the awareness generation tools to popularize ICT in rural areas in the context of e-agriculture? 1. Awareness through local community gathering (by Court-yard meeting, Workshop, locally initiated Theatre on common rural problems and solving etc.): There is no other alternate way to aware the local community without these public gathering. I have a friend of mine worked in this process in which they have introduced a new idea called Theatre for Development (TfD) process. According him, they have primarily gathered some local problems (regarding agriculture and other) from the community, made a script on that and then they trained some local hand-picked actor-actress to perform the situation in public place through open-air theatre. At some point of the play when they have reached to the "problem", they invited individuals from the audience to solve the problem. The play is designed in such a way that if some problem/solution session arises, that automatically results to the center specific ICT solution. And thus the present audience and hence the locality become informed about the center, its activity and the usage of ICT for their own purpose. As per my friend, this process made a huge impact among the locality. So, I think, this could be a tremendous tool to popularize ICT in rural areas in the context of e-agriculture. 2. Hands-on demonstration (once/twice a month) about the process of the query and delivery of the content from rural centers may have a good impact in this context. This type of campaign has already started by Win Inc. few months back and its result is very positive. A huge number of the locality became aware about the centers (CICs/RICs). regd Remi IT Director Win Inc.

Hi Remi from Win Inc. We have hosted www.ruralinfobd.com and e-krishok as a part of it (discussed in the News & event section). We do deliver content developed and incorporated from various sources (Govt. and non-govt) in native, easily understandable language to the farmers through Community Information Centers (CIC) runs by GrameenPhone and Rural Information Centers (RIC) runs by individual entrepreneurs. Since our target was to deliver the infos through these centers, we didn't need to make it as google/yahoo searchable. But, since this is done in UNICODE, it can be searchable by google which will lead the user to our contents. Some of our contents have been coded for that approach for test basis. Ex.- If we search by "Potol" (Bangali name of "Pointed Gourd") in uncode Bangla, our site along with link appears in the first of the list. Like this some other 10/15 items are in process to make them searchable. So we can say that our project www.ruralinfobd.com (and hence e-krishok) is google-searchable friendly (in unicode Bangla). regd, Remi

Serving as Director, IT Division at Win Incorporate. visit www.winbd.net for more info on Win. thanks.

Nice to have Mr. Islam here. Relating to your idea, I have to share that, we Win Incorporate has already started a club as you described, name e-krishok in 5 different points where we are working presently. All of these primarily running by Win with Gp CICs assistance. It is in testing phase. We are gathering members (mostly farmers) through e-krishok project from locality (initially from 5 locality). They have been offered to have necessary information related to their work and also initiating a selection process to pick-up some good farmers to give Training (agri related) from a government supported institute, almost FREE OF COST which can improve them in some way. We are also planning to do monthly or bi-monthly workshop/gathering to share views among members of e-krishok in information necessity perspective. You can find more at www.ruralinfobd.com/e-krishok/ regd [/url]

Hi Its Remizius remi from Dhaka, Bangladesh. Serving as Director, IT Division at Win Incorporate. Details about Win at [url]www.winbd.net.[/url] Questions: To Mr. SHAH Masood: a. How do you generate income from call center for long time sustainability? b. How the contents are created, validated and updated? Responding Mr. Manish's discussion topic, I would like to share my views and experiences: Win is running a pilot phase of an e-agricultre based project called ruralinfobd.com with the collaboration with KATALYST since last 6 months. Our delivered contents are mostly based on local rural need. And in the process of content development, some Government officials and documents were introduced successfully (as well as non-government). For the time being, the information is disseminated through some localized centers called CIC (Community Information Centers), a project of Bangladeshs' most emerging Mobile phone company GrammeenPhone. Rural people used to take necessary information from these centers as per their need paying a little amount (sometimes none). These models have also been introduced in some other e-agriculture initiatives like Alokitogram and Ghat; those have also been initiated by KATALYST few years back. And all of the content of these projects is developed in Native language "Bangla" to communicate widely with local people. Based on our field experience I have some suggestions/thinkings: 1. Need: Information on Indigenous technology, intermediary problem solution has immense potential in the rural community. 2. Suggestion: Info can be introduced with audio and video for more understanding, success story dissemination through group activity in weekly gathering (Win has initiated in e-krishok project), problem and solution sharing through farmers in group activities which may resolve some problems instantly. 3. Recommendation: [quote]1. e-agriculture centers ( like GPCIC, RIC here in Bangladesh) can setup community radio (for weather forecast and local news) which can be maintained by localized private stakeholders . 2. Centers can organize training facility for young and energetic individuals to promote new business ideas regarding agriculture (like Mushroom, Koel raring etc.) [/quote] But above all, awareness building is a great necessity for e-agriculture centers to let the rural people know about the services these centers are offering. Question: Can any one of this forum share any real-life experience about "Market price delivery system" to the rural farmers through e-agriculture related centers?