Nationwide Telecommunications Project: Bridging the Digital and Gender Divides in Myanmar

ICT projects that recognize the digital and gender divides can help provide women with equal access to communication tools to increase their voice and representation. This report explains in detail the communication and gender context of ADB’s Nationwide Telecommunications project in Myanmar, challenges encountered, and lessons learned.

Nationwide Telecommunications Project in Myanmar: Bridging the Digital Gender Divide

Political and economic reforms have promoted recent development of the telecommunication infrastructure in Myanmar. ADB viewed the Nationwide Telecommunications project as an opportunity to mainstream gender equity in private sector operations, and developed a Gender Action Plan (GAP) with Ooredoo, one of the two companies awarded by the Government of Myanmar with a license to provide telecommunications services on a build-own-operate basis.

Bridging the Digital and Gender Divides in Myanmar

With access to mobile phones rapidly improving in Myanmar, ADB’s Nationwide Telecommunications project is helping bridge the country’s digital and gender divide. This project is leveraging Myanmar’s ICT modernization to accelerate women’s and girl’s participation in health, livelihood, and education through communication innovations such as Geek Girls Myanmar, the Connected Women community, and the use of mobile applications.

Training the Hippo: Communication and the Education of India’s Rural Kids

In providing equity investments to social enterprises with sound business models such as Hippocampus Leaning Centers (HLC), ADB’s experience has shown that there is a need to intensify communication approaches to sustain the delicate balance between commercial sustainability and affordability, and provide quality education to increase learning outcomes. This report discusses in detail how HLC was able to identify its communication needs and address the communication challenges to increase enrollment, recruit suitable teacher candidates, and get the support of the community.

Hippocampus

Hippocampus Learning Centers (HLC) is a company that pioneered an affordable supplementary education offering kindergarten and after-school programs for rural kids 3 to 11 years of age in India’s State of Karnataka. Using the pooled experiences of its Founder, Board of Directors, and staff in early child education and knowledge of the education sector and market, it identified the tactical and strategic communication challenges of setting up and sustaining private primary centers in rural India.

Communication and the Education of India’s Rural Kids

While India has significantly increased the enrollment rates in primary schools, pre-school education is not widely available in rural areas leaving a huge learning deficit among rural kids. The Hippocampus Learning Center (HLC) used art performances, village festivals, and other communication approaches to gain the trust of rural communities, and win over parents to invest in early education. HLC also built the confidence of young women to be effective educators effectively providing them with more options, and promoting positive female role models among children.

Communicating Environmental Protection

Rationalizing communication approaches to fit stakeholder needs, interests, and access is crucial for multi-stakeholder projects covering different national, district, and local levels. This report discusses in detail the key communication approaches used by the Coral Reef Rehabilitation and Management Project Phase II in Indonesia, and why it pays to integrate communication as early in project design as possible.