You are here:

PROTIC

Led by Dr Larry Stillman, Dr Tom Denison and Associate Professor Gillian Oliver, the team worked with isolated Bangladeshi communities to support rural women through an interactive community information service – developing technical information applications for:

crops, livestock and disease alerts
agricultural and climate science
entitlement rights
housing and health.

Project objectives

To develop and implement an interactive mobile phone information system and responsive community ‘hub’ in Bangladesh for isolated communities in sand islands (char) and coastal communities as a model for further uptake.
To engage village communities, local NGOs, universities in Bangladesh, OXFAM and Monash University in Participatory Action Research (PAR).
To give agency to community voices via the interactive mobile phone information system. This resulted in meaningful change for people in poverty and drove change in communications and information system design and implementation, and in how other stakeholders work with an advocate on the part of these communities.
To develop significant practical and theoretical insights about information and communications, and PAR to share with the development and academic communities in Bangladesh and beyond.
To evaluate and demonstrate positive effects on community capacity.

Research in Action

Projects like PROTIC consider communities in Bangladesh but as actors engaged in community problem- solving rather than passive recipients of technological opportunities. Thus a key issue for the project is how Participatory Action Research as a bottom-up strategy can be used to engage with villagers in innovation with technology. It is expected that reliance on local knowledge will increase over time as the women become more familiar with the phones, their potential, and the ways in which they might be able to adapt it to their particular circumstances. From an academic point of view, the importance of collaboration with and participation of the people at the bottom with forms of interpretive research has been highlighted as a critical success factor (Heeks 2009; G Walsham 1995).
In an international project like PROTIC, with researchers and participants from Australia, Italy and Bangladesh (including Oxfam and NGO staff, and villagers), we also have to take into account many intercultural subtleties in between us. Questions that are opened up in the process include the mediated nature of perception, the dialogical process of meaning making, the creation and use of artefacts as a way to transmit, preserve or transform local knowledge and practices, and the importance of fully acknowledging local expert knowledge. Culturally-sensitive approaches also foster a re-definition of methodologies and a self-reflective attitude aimed at reflecting about the assumptions that all the parties involved in a project bring with them, and more important, on the processes of intermingling cultures activated by any encounter.
An emic (that is mutually empathetic) understanding of cultural issues is implied importance placed on dialogue, brokerage and negotiation between parties with attention to power and inequality issues. In order to achieve the optimal level of participation and outcomes for the communities involved, the challenges of working with NGOs in new ways need to be recognized and strategies devised to minimise their potential negative impact. This requires a high degree of ongoing self-reflection and continual dialogue between Oxfam, Monash and its partners.
The women themselves have taken part in activities that gives them a voice that influences the conduct and content of the project and they have undergone PAR training. Co-creative responses to the technology are being seen in the rich data that generates how the Smartphones are being used by the community. The villagers have domesticated the technology, and in this regard, they are beginning to implement a form of control over it.
Source:
Larry Stillman, Tom Denison, Mauro Sarrica, Tapas Chakraborty, Priordarshine Auvi, PROTIC: Reflections on a Complex PAR Project, ICT4D Community Newsletter, Volume 1, Issue 3, Aug 2017, BIID
Name: Provati Rani, Occupation: Female Farmer (Homestead gardening), Village: Borokupot, Union: Atulia, Upazilla: Shyam Nagar, District: Satkhira
In the photo, Provati Rani, a female farmer, is promoting homestead gardening and vermicompost cultivation and income generation. She stays at home but sells her compost in the market along with the other villagers through her mobile phone given from the project. Apart from this, she is getting different information regarding seasonal homestead vegetables through SMS and call center services. She is also using different apps on agriculture provided by the local department of agriculture office to get information regarding her vegetable garden and vermicompost. This year, she produced seasonal vegetables in her garden. She applied new and innovative techniques in her garden from the SMS service of the project. By doing this, her production doubled this year. She sold 25Kg vegetables and earned a good amount of money to fulfill family needs. She also sells 15-20 kg of compost fertilizers worth 20 taka per kilo in the market every month. After receiving the mobile phone all sorts of information is available to her which helps to increase her income. Now she regularly communicates with her husband which also helps her to maintain a happy marriage and family relationship. She uses Facebook to disseminate her learning and experience among other community members. By doing these things, Provati is gradually becoming a role model in her community.
Source:
ICT4D Community Newsletter, Volume 1, Issue 1, Jan 2017, BIID
Sarrica, M., Stillman, L., Denison, T., Chakraborty, T., & Auvi, P.n (2017). PROTIC: Reflections on a Complex PAR Project. AI & Society (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00146-017-0765-9
The PROTIC project, which is distributing smartphones to rural farming women in conjunction with a special call centre in two villages in Bangladesh, can be analysed through many different lenses. Here, we have looked at PROTIC from the point of view of its position in influencing ICT4D policy and practices at the local, NGO, national, and international levels. What is significant is that this viewpoint is driven by bottom-up effects. Previous studies have shown that land-lines improve market interaction, effect transport efficiencies, and reduce isolation or improve personal community security With respect to the impact of the mobile phone, similar impacts have affected a much larger audience, affected gender relations and increased active citizenship (Donner 2015).
We have drawn upon what is known as the Multilevel Perspective (MLP) and Social Practice Theory (SPT), and in particular, used the notions of landscapes, regimes, niche, and practices, to interpret the changes that ICT4D projects like PROTIC bring about (Geels and Kemp 2007; Shove and Pantzar 2005).
At the highest landscape level, PROTIC exists in the context of the boom in mobile communications and its effect on the economy and society worldwide. The effects of these landscape changes has been to exert pressure on different players at the regime level, whether on governments in developing nations like Bangladesh , or significant NGOs engaged in International development. International conferences, agreements and statements have come out of the participation of such bodies and have acted as motivators for action.
At what is called the regime level, the Bangladesh government has responded with its own policies, legislation and papers concerning the development of an information society, including noting the importance of ICTs in poverty alleviation and public access to ICTs and information. At the level of community development players, NGOs like Oxfam have been developing interventions, including the PROTIC.
At the niche level, there is interaction between local NGOs funded by Oxfam, government players (for example agricultural extension officers) and the villagers and details are provided here. The findings here are relevant to the development of further stages of the project, including training, as well as having policy and planning implications for Oxfam and Monash. In terms, these kinds of findings, as they continue through the life of the project can be used to have an influence at the national level in Bangladesh (policy and advocacy), but as well, contribute to Bangladesh having a more informed voice at the international level, in global forums and so on.
Source:
Larry Stillman, Tom Denison, Anindita Sarker, Mauro Sarrica, Using Multilevel Perspective to Analyse Effects of the PROTIC Project, ICT4D Community Newsletter, Volume 1, Issue 3, Aug 2017, BIID

Digital Transformation

Digital Transformation

PROTIC

Project objectives

Research in Action

Source:

Source:

Source: