A Cyber Cafe for Dushanbe: Why This is Valuable

PO Box 4864
Boulder, CO 80306
USA

Tel: +1.303.440.6283
info@boulder-dushanbe.org

A Cyber Café for Dushanbe: Why This is Valuable

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The importance of a Cyber Café for the people of Dushnabe lies in:

(first and foremost) the responsibility of the Boulder community to reciprocate for its Sister City’s gift of the Teahouse
greater exposure of the Tajik people to global thinking, education, and commerce
promotion of understanding and friendship between cultures
much-needed technology to help Tajiks reach educational goals, assist them in pursuing opportunities available to them, become more productive, and participate in the democratization and development of their community and nation
the experience of visiting a building characteristic of Boulder, Colorado with facilities and furnishings found in Boulder culture

Boulder-Dushanbe Sister Cities believes that we, as Americans, are stakeholders in building and maintaining stability and friendships in countries like Tajikistan that are vulnerable to political extremism and poverty. A bottom-up, people-to-people initiative like this project is part of the solution to building and maintaining partnerships that connect isolated peoples with the rest of the world.

Boulder-Dushanbe Sister Cities hopes this project will serve as a model for other Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs), including other Sister Cities organizations in resource-rich countries, to assist their friends in the developing-world in crossing the technological “Digital Divide” so that they may connect with Internet resources and the broader world.

There may be no better country than Tajikistan in which to apply this idea. It is an isolated, poverty-stricken land-locked country still recovering from the collapse of the Soviet Union and civil war. Although it has a very high literacy rate and a motivated people, it lacks technology, and in particular, Internet connections to the broader world. Cultural exchanges are facilitated by the Internet—world-renown cellist and advocate for Central Asia, Yo-Yo Ma, sees the ancient Silk Road as the ‘Internet of Antiquity’ and considers the World Wide Web as the ‘integral tool of contemporary cultural exchange’.

The expanding Internet, satellite-based cellular phone systems, and other global communications networks are becoming a potent catalyst for change in developing countries like Tajikistan. Not only do they facilitate widespread participation in social and political decision making, which is the nervous system of our global civilization, but they also enable a great leap forward by bringing a host of services and information directly to individuals and communities.

The Cyber Café will allow citizens of Boulder’s sister city to gain immediate, though still limited, access through the Internet. This in turn will provide access to educational programs, medical consultations, business opportunities, and business agricultural advice. This “window to the world” will help fulfill the nearly insatiable human demand for access to knowledge and expose thousands of individuals to wider horizons and new horizons and will help shift perspectives to a more modern social and political outlook within a single generation.

Furthermore, this project will provide a seed for development of infrastructure and investment by other organizations, businesses, and governments. In developing nations, where such aid is provided, the success of the people in rising out of poverty and growing in economic empowerment is much greater than those that are just given simple relief aid with every new crisis.

In addition, the Cyber Café is planned as a regional model for more efficient, economic, and low-impact construction, heating/cooling, and sustainable technologies in developing countries.