EREV provides participatory training programs in Windows, Word, Excel, Internet, website creation and computer maintenance to local government units (LGU) in partnership with the national local government associations. Sponsored since 2005 by The Open Society Initiative for West Africa (OSIWA), these ICT literacy programs teach up to 200 learners and trainers simultaneously. "Trainers in training" learn the day before the sections of the manual they will teach with supervision the following day. To create its own training center, each participating LGU purchases 20 refurbished computers using about $2,000 in tuitions collected from the course participants. As the newly trained local trainers continue to their communities, the fees cover their salaries.
At the end of 2009, 35 LGUs will have their new or updated websites online and 7 LGUs will have trained more than 3,000 in ICT literacy of whom about 15% have jobs as trainers, cybercenter managers, secretaries, shop managers, etc.
The program began in 1997 with support from the United Nations Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR), and has since received sponsorship from the Fondation du Devenir, the IDRC, and others. Since the beginning, the LGUs and trainees covered a third of the costs, and the new training centers now are almost entirely self-financing. Visible at www.senegal-local-collectivities.org, these websites and their training centers are known as “local government information systems” or SIP (for Système d’Information Populaire des Peey - Wolof for community). LGU staff and young people collect and word process information from headquarters and neighborhoods. Those with some university education learn web design software (this year switching from Dreamweaver to Joomla) while creating/updating their LGU sites The existence of the SIP sites has brought many development partners and projects to their communities, and in 2007 they won two of four prizes awarded in Senegal by Ville Internet Afrique.