Efficient Computers in Cambodian Schools

Children working on a low-power computer at a school in Phnom Penh run by American Assistance for Cambodia, a not-for-profit group. (American Assistance for Cambodia)

September 30, 2009
By James Kanter
The New York Times

What is the best computer for schools in developing countries?

The answer is one that is rugged and sips electricity, according to Javier Sola, one of the founders of the Open Institute, a not-for-profit group providing computers and training in Cambodia.

Mr. Sola’s organization is building desktop computers that consume about a quarter of the electricity normally used by desktop and laptop computers, and that cost just over $200. Mr. Sola said he had so far installed 400 of the “low-power-consumption” computers in schools and teacher-training centers in Cambodia.

Another not-for-profit group, American Assistance for Cambodia, said that it was assembling and marketing additional computers under the brand name “Compodia,” and using the profits for projects to build schools, fund scholarships and support an orphanage.

The biggest energy savings for the desktop machines come from an Atom processor, made by Intel, Mr. Sola said. But in some cases the computers are directly connected to a battery that is fed with electricity from subsidized solar panels, which he said was a highly efficient way to transmit power.

The batteries cost about $85 each. But using solar power in combination with the battery means students do not have to pay the usual fee to the local grid of about 4 cents a day, or buy diesel to run a nearby generator, Mr. Sola said.

Even more energy savings would possible if costs come down for monitors using LED technology, which is far more efficient than other monitors, the experts suggest.

Mr. Sola said that a popular misconception was that reconditioned desktop and laptop computers are appropriate for developing countries because they are free. But those computers are often unsuited to rural environments, where cables get eaten or short-circuited by ants, roaches and mice, and where dust ends up clogging the fans.

Reconditioned computers also have relatively short life spans, so that “Cambodia produces computer waste at a much faster speed that any of the developing countries that donate them,” said Mr. Sola.

From Khmer Rouge to KhmerOS: Cambodia's New Era Begins With Technology

Photo: Student using new KhmerOS software

Sep 2, 2008
By Casey Mayville
Government Technology

Cambodia has all the makings of an idyllic tourist destination: miles of coastline, year-round warm weather and a rich cultural heritage. Instead, it is a country with a tumultuous past, one that has been caught for decades in the middle of warring nations and civil unrest. Used as a buffer zone by both the U.S. and the North Vietnamese during the Vietnam War, Cambodia suffered from bombs, Communist influence and mounting internal struggles in the 1950s and 1960s. By the mid-1970s, military extremist Pol Pot and the Communist Party of Kampuchea -- also known as the Khmer Rouge -- were rapidly gaining power and thus began the destruction of Cambodian society. People were moved from the cities into the country to live and work in Pol Pot's version of an agrarian utopia. Convinced that Cambodia needed cleansing, Pol Pot and his regime systematically executed an estimated two to three million of their own countrymen. Former government officials, intellectuals, students, businessmen and countless other innocent lives were lost during the five-year reign of the Khmer Rouge. A genocide comparable to the Holocaust, the Khmer Rouge visited torture, mass executions and starvation on the population. Nearly half of Cambodia's 7.3 million people were brutally exterminated while the living were left to pick up the pieces.

A closer look at Cambodia today will reveal a much improved picture. Although Pol Pot died before he could be held accountable for war crimes, his top officials will soon come to trial. The Khmer Rouge has been largely dismantled and the fighting between neighboring countries has been all but eliminated. But a country littered with landmines, suffering from extreme national poverty and battling internal corruption can hardly be considered a thriving nation. Still agrarian in nature, a majority of Cambodia's estimated current population of 13.8 million people subsist on growing rice, corn and other crops. With an average life expectancy of 57 years and an average literacy rate of 67 percent, there is no question that Cambodia falls far behind many of the more developed countries of the world. Today, about 44,000 people have access to the Internet, which is about .3 percent of the population -- a seven-fold increase from the year 2000. But with an ongoing struggle for the basics of survival, how can technology be considered a priority by and for the citizens of Cambodia? Is it something superficial that would be "nice to have" or is it an essential ingredient for the country's future economic prosperity?

A Brighter Future

Open Institute, a non-governmental organization based in Cambodia and headed by Spanish engineer Javier Solá takes the view that technology is indeed a key ingredient for Cambodia's future well-being. "Technology is an essential part of the infrastructure needed for the economical future of Cambodia," explained Solá. "Humanitarian help is more and more directed to try to create development, and not to solve [immediate] crises. Our project is bringing this infrastructure into Cambodia at the right time, as it will be necessary for most urban jobs within the next five years."

Part of the answer is The Khmer Software Initiative (KhmerOS) -- 2007 finalist in the Stockholm Challenge. With help from this program, the hope is that Cambodia will soon be able to open its doors to foreign development and trade.

Khmer Software Initiative

KhmerOS -- initiated in 2004 -- is based on two simple principles: 1) Basic technology is essential to development; and 2) The technology must be in the national language to avoid minority control. With the country's history and current economics, proprietary software companies were not willing to make the translation investment so their products could be marketed there. Cambodians -- with the help of Open Institute -- translated applications such as word processing, e-mail, spreadsheets and an Internet browser into Khmer using Free and Open Source Software (FOSS). FOSS -- which allows for translation, adaptation, modification and free distribution -- became the backbone of the programming process. And since power consumption is an important consideration in Cambodia, FOSS's low power consumption was crucial for sustainability.

During its first year of operation, 2004, Open Institute translated computer applications into the Khmer language. Project workers developed and standardized Khmer scripts and fonts, designed and manufactured keyboards and printed manuals in Khmer for the applications. Translation proved to be a challenge because the Khmer language lacks the equivalent for many words we use in the English language. For example, "They have a word for ‘elder sibling' and a word for ‘younger sibling' but no word for ‘brother,'" Solá explained. The incompatibilities necessitated the use of some English words for clarification purposes.

Government and Education

In 2005, Open Institute teamed up with the government's National ICT Development Authority (NiDA). Together, the two organizations trained approximately 3,000 government officials and 1,000 teachers. For those working in administrative government jobs, the new technology meant the possibility of using computers for their everyday work for the first time, as using English software was not a viable option.

Equally as important was distribution to school teachers and other trainers. Because the education system is the fastest vehicle in which to spread knowledge to the masses, KhmerOS aimed to educate the younger generation of Cambodians through schools and training centers. "The education system produces the professionals of the future [and] these professionals will need computer skills," said Solá.

Later, in 2006, a National Typing and Document Contest motivated several thousand students and professionals to learn how to type Khmer and use other applications. Knowledge of the KhmerOS program was spreading nationwide and soon schools and government operations all over the country were using the new software and technology. As the program matured, its focus shifted to accommodate social and cultural needs of the country. Open Institute began collaboration with the Cambodian Ministry of Education and by 2008, it became mandatory for all high schools with electricity (roughly 30-40 percent) to use the new technology. The most significant achievement of the project thus far has been its ability to involve the government in a positive and productive way, allowing ICT to become fully integrated into public policy.

Sustainability

To ensure that the new technology would have lasting power, KhmerOS made long-term sustainability a top priority. The physical elements of the project found their own way to sustainability. Technology for the Khmer script keyboards and textbooks was transferred to local vendors, who are now manufacturing and selling them. Other aspects of the project are also looking for interested third parties that will turn portions of the project, that now require funding, into businesses that make the system sustainable.

"The most important success factor of the KhmerOS project has been its ability to bring together the [developmental] know-how of NGOs with the technological expertise of the FOSS community and the experience and vision of the Cambodian government," said Solá. "This has interested commercial stakeholders, leading to the sustainable low-cost use of local language ICT in education, government and local society, strongly reducing the digital divide."

Change is always difficult, even when it brings clear advantages. But when change is necessary for survival, bold, and sometimes daunting, steps must be taken. By removing the language barrier, technology has been made accessible to most of the population and is helping Cambodia move out of the past and into the future; a future where information is just a click away.

Information in Khmer about women's issues becomes available on the internet

Posted at The Association for Progessive Communications

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia -- The Open Institute – a Cambodian NGO - launched a Khmer language web portal on October 24 2007. It will give non-governmental organisations, the government, and other organisations working on women's issues in Cambodia easy access to legislation and latest developments related to women's issues. The web portal -through advanced communication tools open to all participants and users- will allow government, NGOs and individuals to share their concerns and announce their activities, in search of synergies with other organisations. This web portal fills a pressing need in Cambodian society, as information on womens issues, legislation and activities has not yet been made available in the Internet, as it is not so easy to find otherwise.

The Women's web portal aims at promoting gender equality in a society in which women can exercise their rights in a balanced way and can build competence to become self-sufficient, with improved women’s participation in social, economic and political life. It does so by providing information that may help other NGOs increase their impact.

Information available on the Women's web portal includes laws, legal documents, conventions to eliminate all forms of discrimination against women, the current state of challenges faced by women, profile and activities of women's institutions and networks, sharing of life's experiences by women, news related to law enforcement and practice, Information Technology, capacity building, leadership, and many other issues that might affect women in Cambodia.

The Women's web portal also provides advanced tools for communications among users and participants. These tools facilitate exchange of information among organizations, supporting their efforts to act in coordination. The tools include mailing list, online forums, the possibility for all user to write their own blogs, and for NGOs to maintain their own pages with information about their profiles, goals and activities. The web portal is accessible at
http://women.open.org.kh

Mrs. Chim Manavy, Executive Director of the Open Institute, commented in her speech that “The Women's web portal is an important resource to disseminate information, share knowledge, and facilitate communication in society. Information is power. Expression of opinions helps improving confidence. Therefore, when women have access to sufficient information, understand about rights, have access to knowledge, and are confident, their participations through various activities in social development will be strengthened.”

The Women's web portal is an important part of the “Women Empowerment for Social Change” program of the Open Institute. Another important activity of this program is to build capacity in organizations working on women's issues on the use and teaching of Khmer computer software and electronic communications as a tool for empowerment of women. The Women's program also conducts research on gender and ICT.

The launching of the Web portal was attended by over 120 participants, and counted with the participation of Sy Define, Under Secretary of State at the Ministry of Women Affairs, who expressed her happiness to see the new web portal come to life, supplying more than necessary information for Cambodian organizations. She also conveyed the hope that access to this information it might help reduce domestic violence.

This programme is financially supported by the Open Society Institute – OSI - and Spanish International Cooperation Agency – AECI.

For additional information, please access to http://women.open.org.kh or contact to the Women's program of the Open Institute via the phone number 023 224821.

KhmerOS to have a social impact

09/18/2007
By Javier Sola
Open Insitute (Cambodia)

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia -- The goal of the KhmerOS project is to produce the basic computer technology necessary for Cambodia to enter the age of technology. The requirements for this technology are clear: It must be in Khmer (Cambodian) language, sustainable, and well adapted to the socio-economic situation of the country.

Cambodia not being a profitable market for software companies, the only option left to undertake this effort is to base it on Free and Open Source software (FOSS), which allows translation, adaptation and free distribution of the software. Even more, FOSS does not have the high computer-power requirements that proprietary software has, allowing the deployment of low-power-consumption computer solutions that strongly affect sustainability.

The project's focus on local language is based on two simple concatenated ideas. a) A country can only open its doors to development if its citizens have widespread access to basic technology; and b) Widespread access only happen when the technology is in the country's own language, otherwise it stays in the hands of a minority that masters a foreign language. The use of Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) responds to the need for modifiable, low-cost low-power-consumption software that fulfills the needs of the country.

Starting in 2004 as a NGO project, during its first year of operation KhmerOS translated to Khmer - and adapted to Cambodian culture - a complete set of Free and Open Source computer applications (word processing, spreadsheet, presentation tool, Internet browser, e-mail client, etc.). All these applications worked in both Windows and Linux platforms. The project also standardized and developed Khmer script fonts, designed and manufactured keyboards for Khmer, developed support programs (such as a typing tutor), and edited and printed manuals in Khmer for the applications.

In 2005 KhmerOS became a joint project between the NGO and the government's National ICT Development Authority (NiDA), starting to reach out to teachers and government officials. From 2005 to 2007 KhmerOS trained, directly or through associated programs, over 1,000 teachers and 3,000 government employees, opening different bodies of the administration to the possibility of working with computers (which they could not do using English language). Installation campaigns took the applications to all provinces of Cambodia, installing them in a large amount of Windows-based computes.

In 2006, a National Typing and Document Development Contest motivated several thousand students and professionals to learn how to type Khmer and how to use OpenOffice.

Also in 2006, translation to Khmer and localization (adaptation) of the Linux operating system was completed, providing a complete computer system in Khmer language. Extensive training to the use of Linux in Khmer started at the Open Institute (NGO that houses the civil society part of the project) and at NiDA.

Intensive work on policy during these years influenced National and Educational ICT policy that now strongly favors the use of Khmer language in ICT (and particularly in education), the use of Open Standards and of Free and Open Source Software.

In 2007, the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sport has signed an agreement with the Open Institute to create a new joint project (Open Schools Program) that is taking the results of KhmerOS to all the public education system of Cambodia. Through this agreement, all the pre-service teachers (and all ICT teachers who are already working as such) will be trained to the use of Khmer language applications. ICT teachers are also trained for Computer Maintenance. Starting in the 2007-2008 academic year all upper secondary schools, public universities and teacher training centers (which have computers for education) will teach to their students computers application in Khmer language. Textbooks for this academic year have been edited and are presently being printed.

Another crucial part of the agreement is that the Ministry and the Open Institute will work together to develop a Master Plan for ICT in Education that will plan not only the teaching of ICT across the education system, but also the use of ICT for teaching and learning other subjects, as well as the automation of the administration of schools. Sustainability of ICT in education will be a very important part of the plan, taking special interest on low-power-consumption computing, and more generally, low-cost use of ICT in education, considering purchasing, electricity, connectivity, maintenance, and training costs.

Working together with the Buddhist Institute, the governmental institution that has traditional maintained the knowledge on Khmer language, the Open Institute has created the first spell-checker for Khmer language, which will be installed in all schools, training institutions, as well as for all other users of OpenOffice.

KhmerOS also provides resources for other projects of the Open Institute, such as the Open Learning project, dedicated to creating e-learning know-how in Cambodia, and the Women's Project, focused on using ICT to reduce the gender gap. The Open Learning project will reach out to educational institutions to help them create and start using distance education content. The Women's Project is working together with NGOs and with the Ministry of Women Affairs to empower (through the use of ICT), staff working on gender issues. The work reaches many other Ministries.

In 2006, building on its expertise on localization, KhmerOS, together with the translate.org.za project in South Africa, started the WordForge project, whose goal is to create the best possible tools for the localization of FOSS in developing countries. A team at KhmerOS has already developed the first versions of this software, and plan to work for at least one more year to reach the objective of producing a tool (a translation editor) that will allow developing countries produce high quality translated software with volunteer or low-trained translators. KhmerOS has also given support to a large number of localization projects in other countries in Asia, as well as participated in some of the most important FOSS projects (such as OpenOffice).

KhmerOS has given support to cell telephone terminal manufacturing companies for them to start producing telephones that can support Khmer language in their interfaces and for SMS. It has also participated in the translation of the software of the terminals.

The Open Institute is also a strong player in the professional ICT sector in Cambodia. Javier Sol·, founder of KhmerOS, is the chair of the ICT Development Committee of ICT:CAM, the ICT professional Association of Cambodia. Contacts with computer manufactures, computer vendors and software vendors ensure distribution of the Khmer language software trough traditional software distribution channels.

Sustainability is an important issue for KhmerOS. Physical elements of the project are finding their own way to sustainability. Keyboards which we first had to manufacture by ourselves are now being manufactured and sold directly by computer vendors. The same will happen with books, which will end up being maintained by the Ministry of Education's Pedagogical Research Department, and printed by commercial editors. Once critical mass is reached, the large effort that is being put now into expansion of the project will no longer be necessary, leaving only a small team of translators and developers in charge of maintaining existing software and translating new versions of existing software which might come out from time to time. With time, the cost of this team can be assumed either by the government or by the ICT:CAM association.

Still, a lot of work still need to be done to fully implement the use of ICT in education, and to ensure that government bodies and civil society can fully profit from this work. At least two more years of work of the full KhmerOS project will be necessary, while the Open Schools Program will need to plan for at least six years, to support the deployment of the Master Plan for ICT in Education.

KhmerOS original vision called for all Cambodians to be able to use ICT in their own language by 2007. This goal has been largely attained, but during time our vision has changed to be more socially oriented. We have understood much better the role of ICT in development and all the other implications of our work, specially in education. We now understand that it has taken us three years to reach the starting line, and that our real work starts now, improving the education system with ICT and preparing students to work on a knowledge-based society, while helping consolidate the basic use of ICT in government and civil society. Students must not only learn the basic use of ICT, but also how to use it as a communication tool (blogging, chatting, forums, wikis, etc.), obtaining a global view of the world that they will have to live in.

The Open Institute's extensive network of partners in Cambodia and around the world, together with the creation of specialized projects which collaborate among themselves - and with different external institutions - creates very strong synergies that are leading, and will lead in the coming years, to the integration of ICT in everyday life in Cambodia, reducing the digital gap and giving less favored Cambodians equal access to the upcoming job market in which a global view of ICT will be a basic requirement.

The KhmerOS project is supported by the Spanish Agency for International Cooperation, (AECI), Capacity Building Germany (InWEnt) and UNESCO. In the past it has received donations from the Internet Society, Afilias, Mr. Pindar Wong, and from other private donors.