UNITECH Research Committee Seminar – 16/2014
NEW MEDIA FORMS TO HARNES SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT IN RURAL AREAS OF PAPUA NEW GUINEA?
Dora. Jimela. Kialo
PNGOUT
Abstract:
This paper presents the pilot research study of a privately funded innovative program case designed to use mobile communication technology as new media form to meet the entrepreneurial educational and other social developmental needs of disadvantaged young people especially women in different communities in Maprik District before funds are sought. This study highlights the importance of sustaining and harnessing community media, Indigenous Knowledge (IK), Post Secondary social entrepreneurial education that use New Media forms to improve youth’s literacy, poverty reduction, employment and other social developmental activities. The methods and experiences of Nana Niangu (Our Youth), a group made up of young men and women that harnesses the potential of ICT and Indigenous Knowledge for entrepreneurial education for women, girls and youth which ripples down tocommunity development. The pilot study illustrates the best practices of social entrepreneurial education with less financial and technological resources within the context of a Papua New Guinea (PNG) rural society. The major challenges facing the young organization are highlighted and its successes are also identified. The activities of the Nana organization reveal that, PNG and other countries in the South Pacific (SPC) need effective multilateral initiatives to meet their educational aspiration as well as the UN Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). If properly and innovatively applied by the public and civil society groups, community media through the use of mobile phones have the potential to improve the quality and access to both pre-secondary and post-secondary education in Maprik District in particular and the Pacific region in general. Undoubtedly so, it will also create a great deal of employment and employment benefits including financial deepening in both macro and micro economic terms. The shift in development thinking and practice towards people-centred programmes and most significantly the participation of people and communities in decisions concerning their own lives is creating new opportunities for social change and the empowerment of both women and men in rural areas. Nevertheless, it is vital to stimulate their indigenous knowledge awareness, entrepreneurial skills development and utilization after completing secondary education and through their involvement to enhance their capabilities further. Indigenous knowledge and forms of communication is often dismissed as “‘traditional and outdated’ and hence irrelevant to modern ecological assessment”. (Mwende. J.2011, p.35-47). Therefore,
“Education is not preparation for life, education is life itself” John Dewy
“What struck me so forcefully was how small the planet had become during my decades in prison.... [ICT] had shrunk the world, and had in the process become a great weapon for eradicating ignorance and promoting democracy.”
(Nelson Mandela, Long Walk to Freedom, 1994)
This pilot research case also critically examines the reasons for the virtual absence of research in this area in PNG is proposed, and contrasts between users of conventional media and alternative media audiences suggested. Finally, connections between social movements and a call for alternative media uses are discussed, the interplay between political consciousness and IK/ICT integrated post secondary educational model with alternative media use is examined, and social conditions in which the latter are responded to be explored.
There are academic arguments advanced to how community media as media for social change and commercial media can advance indigenous ecological knowledge to harness the potentials of rural people in development in Maprik District of East Sepik Province, Papua New Guinea. The central argument of this paper is that the government and the community media organizations and NGOs have a responsibility to create innovative programs designed to use ICT to meet the educational needs of disadvantaged young people and women in different communities can harness the potential of rural people in development. Community media and commercial media will be used interchangeably here and though the two systems are conceptually different, it would be fallacious to regard forms of commercial media as superior to the other merely because they are premised on different world view. Communicating developmental issues through community media therefore are more effective in rural settings and can harness the potential of rural folks and their traditional ecological knowledge in development through community media networks for social change. This should be done by recognizing the need to support sustainable communication media activities and relevant capacity building that promote traditional environmental knowledge awareness, conserve and protect the environment, respect wildlife, flora, biodiversity, ecosystems and cultural diversity, and improve the welfare and livelihoods of local communities by supporting their local economies and the human and natural environment as a whole.
The current governmental or commercial media set ups through its networks can also call for enhanced support for sustainable entrepreneurial activities and relevant capacity-building in PNG through community media in order to contribute to the achievement of sustainable rural development. Through the community media development integrated ICT education processes, the government and the people as a whole can therefore acknowledge the need to further mainstream sustainable development at all levels, integrating economic, social and environmental aspects and recognizing their inter-linkages, so as to achieve sustainable social and economic development in all its dimensions.
Key Words: Secondary Education; Information and communication technology (mobile phones as New Media form); Youth Indigenous knowledge (IK) community media, commercial media, alternative media. Note that new media and ICT will be used interchangeably.
Training: Community development; Social Entrepreneurship
Introduction
“What struck me so forcefully was how small the planet had become during my decades in prison.... [ICT] had shrunk the world, and had in the process become a great weapon for eradicating ignorance and promoting democracy.”
(Nelson Mandela, Long Walk to Freedom, 1994)
Despite the unprecedented development and advancement of modern communication across the globe, there remain millions of disadvantaged men and women, in thousands of communities in Commonwealth countries, who have yet to access modern electronic and print media. Poverty, underdevelopment and illiteracy are the prime causes. Development goals will continue to remain unachieved for these communities if their members are unable to access development education through alternative communication tools. New Media form provides this alternative.
This paper presents a pilot case that represents a best practice example of how rural Abelam youth called Nana Youth (both men and women) social entrepreneurs harness the potential of entrepreneurial education andNew Media form or ICTs1 (Information and Communication Technologies) to promote social integration, social entrepreneurship, youth and community development in Maprik. The aim of this research is to examine the modus operandi of Nana Niantakwa1,(Our Youth) a grass-roots youth development organization in Maprik. The objective of the study is to encourage governments, international development and donor agencies and corporate entities to support social entrepreneurial ventures that target Youths after completing Grade 12, thus harnessing Indigenous Knowledge (IK) and particularly those that apply ICTs for education, informal revenue generation and community development in the hope of up-skilling rural social entrepreneurs in alleviating poverty in PNG and the Pacific region. The aggregate activities of such non-governmental and individual entrepreneurial ventures in various communities promise to expand access to quality education and employment for the youths, benefits including financial deepening in both micro and macroeconomic terms and eventually help to accomplish the millennium development goals in the region. In this age of “youth bulge,” (World Bank, 2006) it is a necessity to invest in young people (men and women) who are critical actors in the development process. Failure to train and employ millions of unskilled and low-skilled youths who have completed secondary schooling in PNG will amount to higher social and economic cost to the society and the country as a whole in the future.
PNG and other developing regions of the world are full of innovativeeducational and entrepreneurial ventures that could exploit the potential of rural people’s IKand harness ICTs mobile technologies as new media to empower ruralpeoplefor development ends. However, the practical knowledge of what works and challenges facing these development ventures remain largely unavailable to policy makers, donors, educators and prospective social entrepreneurs, and where available fragmented and uncoordinated. This study attempts to bridge this gap by using Nanaorganization’s modus operandito provide a “knowledge map” of what works and what is needed for a sustainable scale-up of existing models.
The research is driven by five major questions: How do communication education and media applynew Media Forms to harness the potential of rural people forfurther social entrepreneurial skills,education of young people? What are the alternative ways for community development to increase and improve entrepreneurial activities in order to alleviate poverty in Maprik? What needs to be improved in the existing education context as well as social ventures? What lessons can be drawn from them for the benefit of informed policy and investment for governments and prospective partners? What becomes of youth in their post secondary education life? This pilot study uses the Nana (Male &FemaleYouth group) to provide answer to these questions. The pilot study is based on the examples of positive youth development conceptual framework (EQUIP3/Youth Trust, 2005). The concept of Positive Youth Development promotes long-term investment in the development of the human capital of youths. It involves the engagement of the youth in the development of a long-term and sustainable plan, coupled with the support necessary for the implementation of such plan of action in the course of their lives. Positive youth development aims at preparing the youth to earn a livelihood2, provide for their family and contribute to the development of their community (EQUIP3/Youth Trust, 2005).
Literature Review
This research is an extension of my doctoral dissertation on Sociology of education and leadership, collaborative partnerships, the transformation of rural SMEs and secondary/ post secondary education in PNG. In a region where there is a low supply and high demand for secondary education and entrepreneurial skills development, and where the traditional system of curriculum leadership and delivery (i.e., direct instruction) and government efforts and resources have proved inadequate; technological intervention through public-private partnerships has become attractive and cost-effective. This research builds upon Haddad and Drexler’s (2002) analysis of the imperative for technology in education. In their study, Haddad and Drexler examined the increasing importance of both old and new forms of technology in teaching and learning today. As they argue, the increasing application of ICTs in education has rendered the rigid distinction between face-to-face and distance education meaningless. As the World Bank (2005) notes, access to secondary education in Africa and similarly in PNG cannot be increased without major changes in service delivery. This study highlights the importance of sustaining social entrepreneurs that use ICTs to improve secondary education and women and youth development in post-independence PNG. Dhanarajan (2001) outlines many reasons why innovative approaches, including ICTs, are needed in youth and community development. However, two of these reasons are of particular importance. Namely:
- A large part of the PNG rural population and the rest of the Pacific region still live in educationally deprived situations and unless community media organizations, educators and their policy-makers change their ways of delivering education, the situation will not improve, despite the rising levels of investment in the sector.
- Unless these tools are used to take learning and training to marginalized rural communities, their deprivations cannot be ameliorated. According to (Dhanarajan, 2001, p.2). “Those who work in the field of distance education can and must provide the direction and leadership needed to bring about such change”. Furthermore, Haddad and Draxler (2002) note that the development of ICT networking and knowledge sharing (including IKmy emphasis) has caused a paradigm shift in schooling. They contend that schooling systems designed for the industrial age should change to meet the educational needs of the present global knowledge environment (ibid) in the digital age. Thus, the digital information age calls for a conceptual shift and a new paradigm of secondary and Post secondaryschooling as shown in table 1 in Appendices.
Source: Haddad & Draxler (2002).
Definition
What is New Media?
New Media is interactive forms of communication that use the Internet, including podcasts, RSS feeds, social networks, text messaging, blogs, wikis, virtual worlds and more.
A new media study is a fairly recent academic discipline that explores the intersections of computing, science, the humanities, and the visual and performing arts. Janet Murray, a prominent researcher in the discipline, describes this intersection as "a single new medium of representation, the digital medium, formed by the braided interplay of technical invention and cultural expression at the end of the 20th century...." Wikipedia
This research adapts the rationale behind the application of IK, new media(ICTs mobile phones) in education in Mapriklike the South African Institute of Distance Education (SAIDE, 2000) model. Like Haddad and Drexler (2002), the Nana project identifies the following innovative potential of mobile phone usage for both educational and entrepreneurial development as the rationale behind technology-enhanced post secondary social entrepreneurial education (also known as resource-based learning), SME development, community development and the involvement of civil society groups in the process in Maprik District to (1) expand access to educational provision including broader literacy programs to significantly larger numbers of learners; (2) to shift the patterns of expenditure to achieve economies of scale by amortizing identified costs (especially investment in cost design and development and in effective administrative system); (3) to break down the traditional teacher-centered system of education, and direct a significant proportion of educational expenditure to the design and improvement of high quality educational resources. In essence, these scholars (Haddad and Draxler) (2002) consider the application of new media in education, youth literacy, training and development as means to transcend structural and socio-economic barriers facing education, especially post secondary education,entrepreneurshipand leadership in PNG.
Community development has been defined from different disciplinary perspectives. Hence, there is some ambiguity surrounding the concept. However, many scholars (Lyon, 1989; Ledwith, 2005) agree that community development involves tangible and abstract processes that bring desirable changes in the social and economic conditions of people living in a given geographical community. The process of community development involves the participation of the people (self-help approach) and the involvement of government authorities (technical approach) in initiating and implementing strategies and projects that are geared toward enhancing the lives of people in the communities (Ledwith, 2005).
The use of new media such as mobile telephone, computers and the internet system to leverage development is gaining popularity in rural and urban communities in the developing world. For instance, the rapid diffusion of mobile phone technology in PNG and the Pacific14 years ago has exceeded any single technological innovation in the region in recent times. The region has jumped from Stone Age to digital age while the developed nations went through a long journey of development from Stone Age to Industrial Age and eventually to Digital Age. The world's fastest growth in mobile phone ownership as this technology enhanced by Digicel is playing an important role in reducing poverty (Development Magazine, 2006). This has no doubt affected the lives of rural marginalized people in the Pacific region in a positive way. As the Development Magazine (2006) reports about Africa and I quote:
At its simplest, a mobile phone allows farmers and fishermen to find out the prices in various markets, and allows a handyman to travel to nearby villages only when he is told by phone that there is a job available. In Kenya and Tanzania mobile phones are improving healthcare provision, where doctors use them to diagnose patients living in remote communities. (The Development Magazine, 2006, p.8)
In the same vein, the use of new media and other modern technologies, albeit faster, has offered some glimmer of hope to the poor secondary education sub-sector and thereafter in many Provinces of this nation. The right to literacy and quality education and employment for the youth (both women and men) is always considered the responsibility of the government. Although effective educational policy and regulatory framework remains the responsibility of the government, it must be acknowledged that the large and complex nature of education and knowledge acquisition in today’s world, particularly in a high-income region such as Maprik, can no longer be left alone to the government. Rather, the enrichment of secondary and post secondary education for those who dropped out of the formal system as youth development depend on a sustained collaborative partnership between PNG governments,individuals, social entrepreneurs and Community Media Organizations from within and outside PNG. The ability to harness the benefits of new mediaand IK provides tremendous opportunities for developing the potential of Papua New Guinean women, youths and rural marginalized people through education and training. Such collaborative partnership and the enabling environment provided by good policy frameworks and leadership both within and without the educational settings are essential in stimulating a broad scale application of new media forms in entrepreneurial activities, youth, literacy and community development in Maprik.