
What is the commercial viability of urban community telecenters for long term unemployed?
There is no short answer to this question. I have been watching the
development of various kinds of telecenters around the world for the last
15 years, and have concluded that there are very limited situations in
which they are likely to succeed - and even then, it takes an incredible
amount of effort to make them work.
One of the basic problems is that if you're trying to set up a center to
provide jobs or work for the unemployed - or anyone - you only have half of
the demand-supply equation. If you aren't equally able to find a steady
flow of relevant work for these people to do, the center cannot succeed.
This is not impossible, but it does require a lot of marketing effort to
locate enough work to keep enough people busy enough of the time to make it
worthwhile for everyone.
Also, you have to deal with the problem of sufficient utilization of the
center. Even if you are successful in finding work for people during the
normal daytime hours, you are still left with a center that is unused for
approximately two-thirds of the day. That's why the most promising centers
I've seen are multi-purpose - they may also function as community centers,
education centers, government-service outreach centers, etc. The more uses
you can find, the more likely it is that the overhead costs can be covered.
I don't want to discourage you from trying, but have to observe that there
have been more failures than successes as these centers have been planned
around the world. However, there have also been some notable successes.
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