Jorge Bela, Bogotá Community Manager
The illiteracy rate in Bogota is slightly below 2 percent, according to official reports. This represents the best rate in Colombia. The real rate might, nevertheless, be somewhat higher, due to the constant inflow of immigrants from rural areas, where illiteracy rates are much higher, into the capital. In addition, the 2011 PIRLS report (Progress in International Reading Literacy Study) suggests that the rate of functional illiteracy is quite high in the country as a whole. These problems are aggravated by an elevated rated of digital illiteracy, as high as 50 percent as suggested by a 2010 survey by the Ministerio de Tecnologías de la Información y las Comunicaciones. Digital illiteracy is a pressing challenge in large Latin American cities. It affects more severely the populations already at a higher risk of social exclusion, and makes it harder for them to benefit from current economic prosperity. It also affects negatively the competitiveness of local economies, which are unable to meet the challenges of an increasingly open and technology-driven world economy.
To tackle this problem, an alliance between the City of Bogotá and the Empresa de Telecomunicaciones de Bogotá (ETB) has created several training programs aimed at improving digital literacy in the Colombian capital. Fifteen “interactive gateways,” multimedia hubs equipped with Internet-enabled computers, are used for the training. These hubs were created by ETB and located in the neighborhoods with the greatest needs in Bogotá. The first program targeted micro-business and micro-entrepreneurs. The training lasted 40 hours and covered the basic use of a computer, word processing (Word), presentations (PowerPoint), spreadsheets (Excel), “cloud” applications, graphics, image processing, Internet navigation, online government transactions and email. The free courses were open to any micro-business owner in the agro-industry, services, industrial, and leather sectors. More than 10.000 people benefited from these courses.
In a second phase the program has been expanded to cover individuals at high risk of social exclusion: recyclers, victims of the armed conflict, informal sellers, and people with disabilities. The program includes seven increasingly difficult modules of 20 hours. Once a module is completed, the participant obtains a certificate. The ongoing program has a budget of 400 million COP (about $200,000). The courses cover basic digital literacy, introduction to office tools, Excel, intermediate Excel (inventory, receipts, payroll), webpage design, virtual communities, and job searching.
The Secretaría Distrital de Integración Social has launched another interesting initiative. In this case a training program was designed for homeless people in Bogota. The program was aimed at giving them basic digital literacy and to raise their awareness of the problems that vandalism and theft of copper cables causes to the city. A total of 118 homeless people have participated in this training program. Although the number might seem small, the program has had a significant impact in a community often neglected and even ignored by local authorities.