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After two and a half years of hard work, the achievements of the
Lalashan DoWeb project had gone far beyond everybody’s expec-
tations. Back in August 2000, most of the households knew little
about computers and the Internet. But by 2005, Lalashan had
been selected as an e-commerce and digital opportunity bench-
marking community in Taiwan Province of China. Nowadays, 80
per cent of Lalashan households own computers, and most of
the computers are connected to the Internet via broadband. Their
children were the winners of the Silver Award in the International
Schools Cyberfair award. A total of 91 Lalashan farmers sold their
peaches online and generated a total sales value of USD356 000
in 2005. Also, the farmers’ average income for selling peaches in
2005 has been doubled since 2000.
Next steps for the Telecentre
How to make telecentres sustainable is an important issue. It
has been recognized that the full involvement of local commu-
nities is a key for the success of telecentres. Only through local
communities’ involvement, do telecentres have the potential to
provide services full of abundant localized content. Since each
local community has its own character, the best development
model for each telecentre may be different from the other. For
example, online business for selling local products can be
successful for a telecentre located in a fruit garden area, while
scenic areas can use a telecentre to develop tourism. Taiwan
Provice of China has built some different successful models for
telecentre development in the past years. Based on this, there
are definitely good opportunities to make much better progress
in developing successful telecentres for bridging the digital divide
in remote areas.
Outlook of Smangus Tribe
Photo: Directorate General of Telecommunications
Smangus’ Web site