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Target GroupsHypothesis : - the groups of people to whom information will be made available need to be clearly identified - the target group of the activity may not be directly the poor. Some target groups may be institutions that support development processes. Sustainability may therefore be affected by whether the institution significantly contributes to the development process and whether the institutional factors are in place.
The target groups are those group) that actually use and benefit from the project itself; they may be distinct from the intended final beneficiaries. Categories of target groups include: ·Government - highly educated, but, as the recent e-governance debates have illustrated, not always very ICT aware in terms of the realities of what ICT can do or how to commission them. ·Donors INGO and Large international NGO– highly educated, relatively ICT aware, access to resources (not only financial); ·Networks (national) – highly educated and resource rich, in order to perform function as a resource for other NGOs; ·NGOs (national) – large range of ability from very small, local initiatives driven by a charismatic individual, to large, professionally run organisations; ·CBOs – tend to be small, local organisations; since they have a reliance on community members this can often mean that levels of education and awareness may be low; ·Citizens – poor members of communities intended as ultimate beneficiaries of development interventions.
Table 3: Overview of target groups for each organisation
CARDIN, MIGIS and KUMINFO who each have objectives focussed on enhancing the planning process, the target group are the institutions involved in the planning process. This is not to say they do not have interaction with poor communities. MIGIS for instance is intended to be used with communities to enhance the participatory planning process.
Of the rest we can identify a difference between the cases that intend their services to be accessed by those who are to some degree computer literate and those that are for everyone in the community.
ACISAM is broadcasting within a community, effectively acting as community television. Almost all the community will have some exposure to the broadcasts and no degree of computer literacy is required to reap the benefits of the service.
The target group of Revistazo on the other hand, is the internet users of Honduras - “There are approximately 125,000 internet users in Honduras, mostly middle to upper class citizens, including NGOs, businesses, and government users. This obviously limits the accessibility and impact for lower classes. However, the middle and upper class people are the ones who have the power and influence to make legal/policy changes which will ultimately benefit the poor at a structural level.” Revistazo Case Study
While the case studies illustrate a range of target groups, and support the premise that an ICT activity may not be targeted directly at the poor, there is little in the studies that demonstrates what the essential features of a target group are for sustainability. Some features can be deduced by considering the contribution to the development process and the benefits which is discussed below.
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