Social Norms
Social norms action with informed and engaged societies
Social Norms
After nearly 28 years, The Communication Initiative (The CI) Global is entering a new chapter. Following a period of transition, the global website has been transferred to the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits) in South Africa, where it will be administered by the Social and Behaviour Change Communication Division. Wits' commitment to social change and justice makes it a trusted steward for The CI's legacy and future.
 
Co-founder Victoria Martin is pleased to see this work continue under Wits' leadership. Victoria knows that co-founder Warren Feek (1953–2024) would have felt deep pride in The CI Global's Africa-led direction.
 
We honour the team and partners who sustained The CI for decades. Meanwhile, La Iniciativa de Comunicación (CILA) continues independently at lainiciativadecomunicacion.com and is linked with The CI Global site.
Time to read
1 minute
Print
a- a+
Published 25 years ago
Last updated 1 year ago
Read so far

Simputer Trust - India

0 comments

Simputer Trust is a non-profit organisation aiming to define and develop a low-cost mobile computing device (the Simputer) for the rural masses.
Communication Strategies

The Simputer will feature customisable Indian Language front-end interfaces. This will be an extremely low-cost product, so they will use widely available, free public-domain software for the operating environment and to develop their own applications. The basic software applications on this device will be offered free of charge. They will also publish the application programming interfaces to enable commercial and non-commercial software vendors to develop applications for this device.
Development Issues

Education
Key Points

India has done virtually nothing about deployment of software in local rural languages. A large section of the population remains ignorant of the Information Technology Revolution. This product is targeted at an end-user price of under Rs. 9,000 (US$200 approximately). The Simputer is targeted as a shared computing device for a local community of users. A local community such as the village panchayat or the village school, or a kiosk, or even a shopkeeper should be able to give this device out to individuals for a specific period of time and then pass it on to others in the community. This requires the device to be personalized for individual use on a changing basis. A low-cost version of this device may be targeted to the home user, whereas a slightly higher functionality version can be designed for use in "Web kiosks" where people can Surf the Internet at their convenience. The Simputer could be used in schools to offer Internet access at relatively low-cost.
Partners



The Simputer project has brought together people from two entities:The Dept of Computer Science and Automation at the Indian Institute of Science, and Encore Software (formerly Ncore Technologies).

Sources

A letter from Vijay Chandru to The Communication Initiative.