Remote villagers across Azerbaijan [7] now have access to free Internet at 30 community-centered kiosks installed throughout the region. The kiosks offer an invaluable bridge to people and places far away, and give villagers the opportunity to reach further and access more than ever before.
“Installing the kiosk made us feel connected to the world. If you need any kind of information, if you want to talk and see your relatives in Russia or Turkey, if you are eager to learn languages, if you need to submit your tax reports or simply wish to read a book, you just click online,” said Zuar Karimov, a Post Office manager at one of the kiosk locations in Dunyamallary. In English, the town’s name means “World Products.”
With a population of 8,000, nearly 60 percent of residents there (youth, adults and senior citizens) are registered as users of both Facebook and Odnoklassniki (Russian social network) and/or have registered a Skype account to contact family and friends in other cities and countries.
The kiosk has helped transform the post office into a community center, where locals come to read online newspapers and browse the Internet, as well as their usual business of posting letters and paying their bills. Staff from the nearby hospital and library also frequent it and can often be seen lining up to find out about new medicines or read new books.
The kiosks were installed under the auspices of the USAID [8]-funded Azerbaijan New Media Project [9] and with support of the Ministry of Communications and Information Technologies (MICT).