Little steps to lofty goals: keys to successful community learning for civil society development

Abstract

This is a story about the things that came together in Armenia, beyond the availability of technology, to bridge time and distance. It is a case history of Project Harmony's Armenia School Connectivity Programme (ASCP) that attempts to highlight the little things and their weaving together to form a fabric of community learning for sustainable civil development. The story affirms the importance of community and organizational context in the success of the project. It identifies some key aspects for catalyzing distributed learning communities for development, including confidence-building through layered training, relationships, attention to how we talk about learning and community needs, and close attention to people before technology.

Although this paper highlights some approaches for areas of low Internet penetration, the process lessons presented here are relevant across a wider variety of settings. And of course, this story pays attention to those little human nuances that support connection ? and eventually learning ? across a community