Vidya Pratishthan's Institute of Information Technology Baramati, Maharashtra, India Co-Organized by Digital Partners, Media Lab Asia and VIIT

Digital Partners' second Annual Baramati Initiative on ICT and Development was held at the VIIT in Baramati, India in early June. Over 150 participants from around the world registered to attend-including such notables as MIT Media Lab Chairman, Professor Nicholas Negroponte, Minister Sharad Pawar, and the High Commissioner of Ghana to India, Professor Mike Oquaye. The annual event is gaining international relevance in the global debate concerning ICT and development, and several champions have stepped forward to help us secure reliable funding to assure the continuance of the event.

One of the most unique and enlightening components of this year's gathering was the opportunity to hear directly from the grassroots users of ICT to improve lives in poor communities: several operator's of village IT kiosks presented their experience, Rangama a branch manger of a micro-credit organization demonstrated the use of Smart Card and a hand held device, and several women involved in using IT to earn a living spoke about their work an the impact on their quality of life. Their stories and perspectives added a reality and relevance to the proceedings rarely experienced at similar international events. Ramamurthy, a 12-year-old boy from a poor village in Uttar Pradesh, was an inspiring highlight when he addressed the imposing audience using a PowerPoint presentation that he had created especially for the meeting.

Several prestigious keynote speakers addressed the assembly over the two days of the conference, including Prof. Nicholas Negroponte of the MIT Media Lab, Kiran Karink, the new head of the National Association of Software and Service Companies (NASSCOM), Retired Lt. General Arjun Ray, and Rama Bijapurkar, a marketing consultant. The topics they addressed ranged from the need for more private sector involvement in the production of appropriate ICT tools for poor communities to the need to increase the ability of these communities, even the most remote regions, to effectively and innovatively use these tools.

The gathering also provided an opportunity to showcase innovative village-level ICT applications such as: the Simputer a local hand-held computer designed and manufactured in India, the Village PDA from Sri-Lanka; the GramChitra GIS project by the Centre for Spatial Database Management and Solutions for Media Lab Asia, a prototype English-to-Hindi language translation software package known as Shakti, and the Interactive Voice Response System for Rural Populations developed at the VIIT in Baramati itself.

Finally, the event marked the culmination of Digital Partners Social Enterprise Laboratory™ (SEL). An outgrowth of last year's conference, SEL identifies and mentors promising initiatives, helping them refine their project plans and effectively integrate ICT into their programs. This year four projects were recognized with funding from Digital Partners totaling $160,000.

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