Network Co-casting

Community/Cooperative/Contextual casting

Gram Vaani’s co-casting platform enables NGOs or other agencies working in rural areas to communicate more effectively with their field extension workers and communities. A low-cost co-casting box can be attached to phone lines so that community members can call into the box and leave questions, or conference to interact with experts and other members. The box can also be connected to a television set so that educational videos made locally can be played out to listener groups during scheduled sittings together with an expert or local mediator.

 
Co-casting stations can even be connected with one another. While local communities bring crucial context important for a better understanding, networking different communities increases their chances of learning serendipitously from each other and through diverse viewpoints on debatable matters. Co-casting stations can exchange content even without the need for Internet connectivity. We use the VLink system developed at the University of Waterloo for reliable content distribution over CDs and USB keys. The content may therefore not be available instantaneously, but only when somebody moves from one village to another. Yet, this can be huge benefit, in fact, even for those locations that do not have a high bandwidth Internet connection.

 
Note that co-casting is not just technology. The people and process are more important. Please read our co-casting manual to understand more on how to use co-casting.