I was chatting with my old school friend Manoj, who tells me that he likes CDs burned rare medium ;-) and also sees only boxes when I type in Nepali language in our chat conversation. He agrees to preview Office 2007, but is not sure if his 'puter is capable of using the cool features without the drop down menus of Office 2007. Very well educated and people from well-to-do families of our society are all using computers, albeit still in what I called 'dark ages' that is not able to see any unicode fonts (read Win 98). The challenges of localization is not only the technical aspects of creating binaries but also being able to evangelize and convert people from the dark ages to the enlightened world of localized computing --- another face in the upper pyramid of digital divide.

Today (as has been for the past couple of days covering telecenters in Bungamati, Dhulikhel, Panauti, Gerkhutar, Devighat) my colleagues Sunaina, Gita and Shrijana went to Sankhu and did an Orientation along with handing over the various equipments for providing 'voice to the voiceless' of the community who without having to go to the streets and shout slogans, using traditional ICTs like radio and newspapers, and modern ICTs like computers and Internet, should be able to influence the policy making bodies of our government. This would hopefully provide the 'power to the people' in its fullest and democratic-est sense.

Some photos of the Orientation Program are posted here: http://www.culminisconnections.com/sites/FITNEPAL/Sankhu%20Telecenter%20Orintation%20Program/Forms/AllItems.aspx