Recipient Institution:
Jhai Foundation
921 France Avenue
San Francisco CA 94112
United States of America

Project Leader: Vorasone Dengkayaphichith, and Lee Thorn (Chair)

Amount and Duration: USD $ 30,000 / 17 months

Project background and justification

In their recurrent meetings with Jhai Foundation researchers, villagers in a Valley near Hin Heup, Vientiane Province, Lao PDR, stated that the lack of communications capability both within their valley and beyond limits the potential for older and younger generations to achieve sustainable rural livelihoods.

Chief barriers include:

• Lack of communication among local farmers, craftsworkers, and entrepreneurs (there are no telephones and because of geography, no possibility of cell phone use)
• Lack of information about and communication with the market town of Phon Hong and the capital of Vientiane
• Lack of communication with business-minded Lao in cities and overseas
• Lack of communication with Lao-based development organizations
• Poor roads, limited means of transportation, and the absence of electricity heighten these barriers.

Such conditions, combined with a lack of entrepreneurial skills and experience, keep Hin Heup villagers from achieving the economic self-sufficiency and community stability that they have stated are their goals.

Five villages in a river valley near Hin Heup

The Hin Heup district of Vientiane province is about 100 km from the city of Vientiane. Families in the villages of the valley support themselves mainly through subsistence-level rice farming, with additional work in crafts and a few small-scale construction businesses. Vehicles are scarce, and travel is difficult among the villages and across the 30 km to the market city of Phon Hong. The roads are nearly impassable during the rainy season.

In 1975, internal refugees from the Plain of Jars (Xeng Khuang Province), displaced by U.S. bombing, were allocated land in a valley near Hin Heup by the incoming communist government. The roughly 20 villages in the valley now house approximately 8,000 people. Literacy rates are low. Women over 40 have generally received no education; men over 40 have generally completed 3rd grade. Today, youth generally complete 5th grade. A middle school in Ban Phon Kam now serves youth in the surrounding ten villages, but skills overall remain low.

The valley’s fertile land, in combination with technical assistance in agriculture (see “Villages in the Hin Heup District and Jhai Foundation,” below), now enable farmers to produce surpluses in rice most years and some organic produce for sale. However, there are currently no local markets in the valley. Sales for produce and crafts require travel to the town of Hin Heup. Although surplus rice can be stored for months, when properly done, farmers lack access to accurate information about pricing and price fluctuations.

Lacking business skills, tools, and opportunities, and in need of cash, local craftsworkers may sell their goods for less than the cost of materials.

Villages in Hin Heup District and the Jhai Foundation

Since 1998, Jhai Foundation has been working with villagers in five villages—Phon Kham, and the surrounding villages of Phonthong, Khonkeo, Phon Neun, and Phon Kang Ban in a valley in the Hin Heup District. Jhai uses planning and training more than charity to help the villagers of Phon Kham and nearby villages to do the things they choose to do.

In early 2000 Ban Phon Kham leaders and others created a ten-year vision for their village with Jhai facilitators’ help. Twice each year, an increasingly large number of villagers from surrounding villages, together with their leaders and Jhai personnel, envisions future transformations and identifies near-term objectives and tasks. When necessary, Jhai Foundation has helped these villagers achieve their goals by providing technical assistance, including instruction in fundraising, raising funds with them to enable them to make capital investments, and assisting them in communication with the Lao government, other NGOs, and local funders such as the Women’s International Group.

Over the course of this partnership, Ban Phon Kam and other villages have contracted for four deep wells, have reconstructed their elementary school, have raised funds from JICA for a new middle school, have replenished their clinic with medical supplies several times, and have facilitated the increase of regular visits by nurses to the most remote villages. During the last year these villages have also formed a weaving co-op through their Women’s Associations, received training in natural dying, weaving and business development. Villagers have also begun the process of increasing their yields by 30% by building organic fertilizers and applying them with precision, with the help of local trainers.

In mid-2001, villagers identified telecommunications as an important objective. The ability to make telephone calls would increase access to important information, to business opportunities, and to distant family members who send remittances and are potential small business partners. The ability to send data would facilitate submitting the bids and proposals by local builders, enabling them to participate in a wider range of projects, as well as facilitate the ability of weavers to explore additional markets with help from Jhai Foundation and others.

With Jhai Foundation guidance, villagers researched alternatives, including radio telephony (expensive, difficult to send data) and landline-based connection to the Lao telephone system. An executive at Lao Telecom estimated the cost of landline connection at $150,000 USD.

Research and consultation by Jhai Foundation with ICT experts in Silicon Valley has identified a potential solution combining wireless Internet access, a rugged computer with low power-drain, and voice-over-Internet telephony. This solution and its capabilities have been described to the villagers, and its potential benefits have been collaboratively envisioned.

Rural population in Lao PDR*

The situation in this valley in the Hin Heup District mirrors that of much of the population of Lao PDR, where over two-thirds of the population lives in rural areas. In these rural areas, incidence of poverty is twice that of cities. Agriculture represents more than 60 percent of the gross domestic product and employs 76 percent of the population—frequently on a subsistence level.

For the Lao population as a whole, life expectancy is 53.2 years; literacy is 58.6 percent, and the primary-school completion rate is 41 percent (in 1994). The World Bank estimated in 2000 that the gross domestic product/capita is $280, country-wide. These figures are all much lower among remote rural populations.

Project objectives

The direct objective of the Remote IT Village project is to enhance the economic and social self-determination of villagers in Phon Kham and related villages by providing the ability to communicate locally, regionally, and internationally, and by providing support for small business ventures of their choice.

The project is also designed to achieve globally replicable results in terms of hardware, software and network connectivity.

The project will develop and field test an integrated solution comprised of a wireless Wide-Area Network, a ruggedized, low-power computer, alternative power generation, and appropriate peripherals. Once refined through field testing, this integrated solution will have the potential to meet the ICT needs of other impoverished people populations in rural and infrastructure-poor areas..

Specific project objectives include:

· To test the functionality of low-cost, high-bandwidth 802.11b wireless hardware and connectivity in the extreme environment of rural Lao PDR

· To develop and test a computer and peripherals with low power requirements and that can be easily assembled and housed from rugged, off-the-shelf components and installed.

· To support the localization for the Lao alphabet and language of an open-source, Linux-based operating system, graphical desktop, and key productivity tools

· To assess the impact of access to voice-over-I.P. telephony, email, the Internet, and productivity software on economic development in rural Lao PDR

· To provide villagers in Ban Phon Kham and related villages with ICT capabilities, plus proven micro-enterprise training and support, to increase their ability to communicate and to achieve sustainable livelihoods

· To create in for five remote, economically related villages a sustainable and easy-to-use ICT resource that can support future efforts in micro-enterprise and commerce, health care, sustainable and organic agriculture, civic participation, and other activities undertaken by villagers themselves

Project beneficiaries

The project will immediately benefit the roughly ,000 villagers of the valley in the Hin Heup District, by enhancing their economic self-sufficiency, in accordance with their express desires and country-wide goals. Direct beneficiaries will include:

• 10 students who will receive computer training and enterprise support, and who will assume the sustainable operation of the stations in their villages
• 75 additional secondary students in five villages who will receive computer training
• Village farmers who will have much-needed access to pricing and other information from the regional market town of Hin Heup,
• Women, especially craftsworkers, and farmers, who will use the Jhai Village IT Centers to organize a regular market in the valley
• Entrepreneurs in the construction and other industries who will have recordkeeping and communications support for existing and new small-businesses
• All villagers, who will have the ability to communicate via voice and text with family members now living in less remote villages and cities in Laos, North America, Europe, Australia, and elsewhere

Additionally, ICT users throughout Lao PDR will have access to a free set Lao-language software tools able to run effectively in older computers (486 through Pentium III) that will include a Graphical User Interface, Internet browser, email, word processing, and spreadsheet capabilities.

Sustainability

Each Jhai IT Center will be independently sustainable. In each village, the center will be owned by the village government, which will employ two-person teams of youth entrepreneurs to operate the center. Wages for the youth entrepreneurs and other operating costs will be paid a percentage of the gross income of their Jhai IT Center.

The wireless transceiver installations, linking the Jhai IT Centers to the Internet, will be jointly controlled by the five village governments in compliance with Lao PDR law. These villages are already involved in a joint voluntary taxation program to raise funds for the middle school in Ban Phon Kham; joint ownership of the network will draw on this successful cooperative model.

After initial costs of capital, installation, training, and first-year consultation and support, operating costs will be low, and will be met by revenues. Internet and (voice-over-Internet) telephone costs will be included in pricing for services (Costs of Goods Sold). Power will be generated on-site using bicycle-style cranks. Costs of consumables—such as printer paper—will be included in service pricing, with additional consumable costs drawn from revenues. Facilities, including furniture, will be contributed by the village governments with some matching funds from Jhai Foundation, and will be free of charge.

Jhai Foundation will provide ongoing consultation and support in technical and operational areas, with heavy concentration in the first year. As necessary, that support will address enterprise strategies, business practices, and sustainability.

Repairs and maintenance

The Jhai IT Centers are designed to withstand years of use in harsh conditions. Networking and operating-system software is designed to be supported remotely by Jhai staff (including the beneficiaries of other Jhai Foundation projects).

However, eventual hardware breakdowns must be anticipated. Village governments will not control the hardware until cost break-outs and business plans are in place, addressing set-asides for replacement of hardware and other factors.

The Jhai Internet Learning Centers: A proven model

The Jhai IT Centers will draw on Jhai Foundation’s experience in the development of four Internet Learning Centers (ILCs) in other locations in Lao PDR. The Jhai ILCs provide ICTs and microentrepreneurial support to students and teachers, helping them to use computers and the Internet for learning, and also to deliver ICT access and services to their communities. Currently the ILCs are operating at 70% self-sufficiency, including replacement costs of all equipment.

In 2001, the Jhai ILCs received a Stockholm Challenge prize www.challlenge.stockholm.se for education and were selected as a premier project by both the Technology Empowerment Network and Digital Dividends.

Methodology

To achieve the objective of the project, Jhai Foundation and the five villages will:

· Localize software tools for use with the Lao alphabet.
These tools will include the KDE graphical desktop environment, plus K-Office tools for email, Internet browsing, word processing, and spreadsheets. Very few people in the valley speak or read English. Non-reading villagers will have access to telephony, via voice-over-internet technologies, but it is essential that the Centers’ youth entrepreneurs and other users have access to tools that enable them to work and learn in their mother tongue.

Localization is headed by Anousak Souphavanh of IBM.

· Complete development of the Jhai Computer
Using readily available components that have been designed for outdoor kiosks and “embedded installations” (such as Automatic Teller Machines), this computer will have no moving parts and will draw very little power. Storage memory will be on a chip, not on a hard drive. A flat-screen LCD monitor will further reduce power requirements and increase durability. (See Annex C for a technical specification.)

The Jhai Computer is designed to withstand being dumped in a bucket of water, battered by dust storms, and dropped off a table.

The Jhai Computer is designed and under development by Lee Felsentein, of Golemics, Inc. Hardware designs by Mr. Felsenstein are featured in the Smithsonian Museum, the Tech Museum of San Jose, and elsewhere (please see biography below).

· Use Human-generated and solar power
At the Jhai IT Centers, bicycle-crank-powered generator will charge 12-volt automotive batteries. A 100 amp battery should run all equipment at 8 hours/day for screen and computer and ¼ hour/day for printer and ¼ hour/day for idling printer, for four days. Jhai network relay stations, connecting the centers to the Internet, will be solar-powered.

· Complete installation of Jhai IT Centers and wireless network
Over a one-month period, consultants to the Jhai Foundation will work in the valley in the Hin Heup District to set up five Jhai IT Centers, a wireless Wide Area Network (WAN) connecting them, and a three-station linkage to the Internet.

Wireless connectivity will operate under the 802.11b standard (also called “Wi-Fi”). Over the last two years, this high-speed wireless connection has grown rapidly in cities throughout the developing world, in both WANs and Local Area Networks (LANs). Through the use of signal boosters, 802.11b wireless connections have been made across distances of 25 km.

PC hardware needed for an 802.11b connection is very inexpensive. A low-cost PC/MCIA card plus an antenna is all that is necessary. (802.11b antennas have in fact been fabricated out of potato-chip cans!)

When the signal is boosted across long distances, 802.11b functions only along the line of sight (not through or around large geographic features, such as skyscrapers or mountains). The Jhai network will take advantage of local geography to link all five villages to a single transceiver. (See Annex D.)

The Jhai Foundation wireless WAN and Internet connection will be installed by network consultant Mark Summer, among the leading experts in 802.11b implementation worldwide.

· Complete linkage of Remote IT Village network to Internet
The five-village intranet will be connected to the Internet across a series of “hops”— first, to a ridge line location that is in the line-of-sight of all villages, then from the repeater station located there to a microwave tower operated by the Lao Army (negotiations in process), and finally to the landline based Lao internet infrastructure.

· Provide 75 village students with IT training
Jhai researchers will use Jhai’s proven training materials and methods to introduce secondary-level students to computer operations, word processing and spreadsheet, and telecommunications. Ten students from this group will be selected as youth IT entrepreneurs who will staff the Jhai IT Centers.

· Provide youth IT entrepreneurs with entrepreneurial training and opportunities
Five teams of two youth IT entrepreneurs will receive enterprise training plus additional training in operation and maintenance of the Jhai computers, peripherals, and network.

As staff for the Jhai IT Centers, the youth entrepreneurs will work closely with their village clients. They will provide services that may include: initiating phone calls over the Internet, typing email messages and other documents, assisting entrepreneurs with spreadsheets, reading communications for non-literate clients. In addition, they will keep records for their centers, report to their village government, participate in monitoring and evaluation, and generate power.

· Provide the Jhai IT Centers with technical and operational advisement
Vorasone Dengkayaphichith, Jhai Foundation’s Project Coordinator, will provide ongoing, direct support to all five Jhai IT Centers and their staffs for one year. Enterprise support will focus on ensuring that the Jhai IT Centers reach out to villagers, provide effective service, and operate sustainably.

In addition, Mr. Dengkayaphichith will work with Jhai IT Center staff people to ensure that villagers are able to use ICTs to meet their self-determined goals.

· Assess technical performance and social/entrepreneurial activities
The Jhai Computer and wireless network will be evaluated in terms of performance and durability. The Jhai IT Centers will be evaluated across a range of indicators, including sustainability, levels of use, and others.

But the key indication of success of the Remote IT Village project will be the ability of villagers to use ICTs to accomplish their expressed objectives. These include voice communication outside the valley with family members and business associates, establishment and coordination of a local market, and access to information that can improve business practices and possibilities.

Project timeline

The timeline for the Remote IT Village project is as follows:

Project outputs

Jhai Foundation plans three major reports: one presenting the effectiveness of the 802.11b network,; one presenting the effectiveness and specification of the Jhai Computer, and a project report documenting the results of ICT access and enterprise support on village activities in the valley in the Hin Heup District.

As an independent NGO, Jhai Foundation survives through active outreach and publicity efforts. Jhai is the recipient of a 2001 Stockholm Challenge award www.challenge.stockholm.se , designated a “premier” project by the Technology Empowerment Network www.techempower.net, and appears as a featured project of the Digital Partners initiative (www.digitaldividend.org). Reuters, AP, BBC, APTN, Asian Wall Street Journal (Singapore), Asia Week, US National Public Radio, US National Public Broadcasting, Canadian Broadcasting Co., and local newspapers and television in Lao PDR, Thailand and the United States have all featured coverage of Jhai projects.

In addition, design specifications and software tools that can be of use to others will be posted to the Internet.

The following specific outputs are anticipated:

· Open-source, Lao-language software tools
Localization of both the Linux-based KDE graphical desktop environment and K-Office tools will enable Lao computer and Internet users to work in their native language; dissemination via Internet download and CD-ROM.

· 802.11b wireless networking report
Field test and demonstration of 802.11b wireless networking in remote, rural valley of Lao PDR; dissemination via project reports, articles, and presentations.

Specifications and performance report for Jhai ruggedized computer
Field test and demonstration of ruggedized, off-the-shelf computer workstation with low power-requirements; dissemination via project report, articles and presentations.*

Research report on ICTs and micro-enterprise support in rural Lao PDR
Reports will document the usage of ICTs by villagers, and activities that villagers initiate to achieve their self-defined objectives; dissemination via project reports, articles, and presentations.

Project monitoring

Monitoring and evaluation will be generated from three sources:

1) Usage and budget data from the Jhai IT Centers

2) Monthly reports from the project coordinators

3) Two-phase independent observation and evaluation

A Lao researcher external to Jhai Foundation will be engaged to complete independent evaluation. Proven evaluation instruments (based on the IDRC Acacia initiative) will be adapted and administered.

Information from these sources will enable analysis of: ·

• Client Usage and activities
• Communication supported
• Business activities supported
• Operational sustainability
• Attitudes and perceptions among the Hin Heup village communities
• Hardware and networking performance

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* Sources include the 1999 “UNDP Fact: The population of Lao PDR.”

* Please note that development of the Jhai Computer, testing of 802.11b wireless hardware and networking capacity, and localization of KDE and K-Office software have all been underway since January, 2002. Completion by September, 2002, is anticipated. The project timeline provides an additional “cushion” of several months in the event of last-minute difficulties.

* Jhai Foundation plans to make the specification of the Jhai Computer available on the Internet as soon as possible, so that other organizations can conduct demonstration, testing, and implementation. The feasibility of various plans for large-scale purchasing and assembly are being considered.

Read the Abstract of Project
Read the Interim Technical Report