| Wat Sakate Telecenter: Empowering the Youth |
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| Sunday, 28 February 2010 11:04 | |
 Wat Sakate telecenter is a youth based telecenter established inside a temple, located at a strategic location in Kaset Wisai district, near the fresh food market. The idea of this telecenter was based on the personal initiative of the temple Abbot (Phra Athikain Wchience Phasuko), he started with his own personal funds in July 2004, to open and support and ICT center inside the temple. The Abbot’s vision and objective of this telecenter was: 1) To divert the youth and the children from playing games at cyber cafés, 2) To create a learning environment through ICT. 3) To attract more people to join the temple, in his view, once people enroll to the telecenter they will find by themselves, time to observe the temple and learn the way of life, instead of just going out to people for preaching. Initially, the youth avoided the ICT center in the temple, but two years later, in 2006, they become attracted to the telecenter. Today the youth are the managers of the center; they train people of all ages and sexes about ICT skills and encourage others to join the center. When the MICT started the telecenter project, in 2007, the Abbot become interested, he personally invited an MICT delegation to visit the temple to observe and decide by themselves whether how to support the ICT center. The MICT was impressed with their findings approved the project and the establishment of Wat Sakate telecenter, the center opened on August 2007. The Wat Sakate telecenter is considered as an extra-large (XL) center because it accommodates 21 computers. The center is open every day from 07:00-21:00 hours, the average users per day are 30 people during the week day and about 100 people during the week-ends. Users buy a coupon with 10 Baht (US$0.3) and use for an hour or as they wish to divide their time of use. There is no user limitation, a user can continue, as long as coupon time lasts. The majority of the Wat Sakate Telecenter users are below 21 years of age.           |
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| Last Updated ( Wednesday, 03 March 2010 03:48 ) |