The Tansen Community Multimedia Center (CMC) initiative is part of a regional innovation and research project initiated by UNESCO to study the potential of information and communication technologies (ICTs) for poverty reduction. The project is looking for ways in which ICTs can be used to empower and strengthen the voices of the poor. Community multimedia centres are an extension of UNESCO's long-standing work with community radio, inspired by the increasingly important role played by new digital technologies. Community multimedia centers like the one in Tansen, Palpa District, Nepal, combine traditional community media—in Tansen's case video, cable TV, and print—with new media tools such as computers and the Internet. The goal is to explore ways in which Tansen can use ICTs as dynamic development tools: to bring more voices, cultural forms, ideas, and issues into the community's media space, and to provide poor, marginalised youth with new skills and opportunities.
The combination of established local media such as community TV with new technologies like the Internet opens up great possibilities to link small, comparatively inaccessible towns and villages such as Tansen to new global networks. New media are not only powerful tools for producing content, they are also gateways to ever-expanding information and knowledge resources.
