About the Academy

The telecentre.org Academy is a global initiative to provide telecentre managers with ongoing training, capacity building, and professional development opportunities. Structured as a consortium of national academies and partners with a small global support unit, the Academy supports and coordinates training programs, promotes the collaborative development and sharing of resources, and maintains accreditation and certification standards.

At a public function in Delhi the telecentre.org Academy was formally announced as a global program on  October 03, 2008 at the Grameen Gyan Abhiyan Convention held at the National Agricultural Science Complex Auditorium in New Delhi in the presence of Professor M S Swaminathan, Mr Jairam Ramesh, the Union Minister for Power and a number of leaders from the private sector, academia and civil society organisations.

The Honorable Union Minister for Power, Mr Jairam Ramesh and Professor M S Swaminathan welcomed the Academy initiative recognising the mandate to prepare a workforce that will serve the base of the pyramid. Dr Basheerhamad Shadrach, the head of telecentre.org Academy mentioned that the launch marked the beginning of strengthening the global program of the Academy. The launch also marked a renewed commitment from telecentre.org to establish global standards for curriculum, global partnership for curriculum administration and the much required global governance for the Academy program.

The Academy's goal is to ensure that telecentre managers have the necessary skills and support to excel in their day-to-day work.

National academies in

have already been established, to be followed by Sudan and Mozambique in 2009. Together, we aim to train one million people by 2012.

The need for the academy was felt within a year of the launch of telecentre.org as a global program hosted by the International Development Research Centre. The idea for continuous learning program for telecentre operators mooted by Karishma Kiri of Microsoft was explored further by the team members of telecentre.org in October 2006 as an exploratory theme. Subsequently, Basheerhamad Shadrach, Senior Program Officer incharge of telecentre.org's operations in Asia, was asked to lead the research and development process.