Circular Digital Lab Cambodia

We seek to address is the current linear approach of digital adoption that produces a lot of electronic wastes in moving toward the digital economy and industry 4.0 in Cambodia. Under this main problem, there are several underlying issues that we also want to address including (1) the increasing e-waste in the country, (2) the digital divide between urban and rural population, and (3) the skills and digital literacy gap among the young population. Our solution is a form of subscription services to help children from low-income families gain access to ICT technology and relevant opportunities at affordable prices. This will be done through (1) collecting used ICT devices from individual households and firms, especially in Phnom Penh, (2) repairing or refurbishing the used ICT devices for reuse purposes, and (3) leasing them to low-income households who cannot afford ICT devices at a high price. Access to ICT devices is especially important for students who need them for distance learning during this pandemic. Furthermore, we will also complement this access with ICT skills / digital literacy training programs, and we will also set up digital labs for students and schools. We are currently in our prototype stage, in which our activities revolve around: 1. Conducting perspective surveys to understand potential donors’ perspectives regarding the donation of their used laptops and smartphones; 2. Identifying potential receiving communities, especially students who are in need of laptops and smartphones to access distance learning or e-learning; 3. Conducting small scale collection and donation projects to support students; 4. Conducting short training on basic ICT skills and digital literacy to support students in using the donated devices; 5. Conducting a perspective survey on affordability among households and/or communities; and 6. Create and implement monitoring and evaluation mechanisms to capture the impacts of the donated ICT devices.