Knowledge is vital in meeting development goals, as experiences from various ICT-assisted initiatives suggest that it amplifies citizen's voices, promotes quality in health and education services, broadens livelihoods bases of the poor and marginalized. The diffusion of ICTs across Orissa so far has been modest. Longevity, infant/child mortality prenatal morbidity, literacy, nourishment and personal liberty and freedom are the basic features of well-being that help in expanding the human capabilities. Various forms of ICT-capturing, storage, processing, communication and display - infuse knowledge that helps in capabilities expansion.

After the `Super-Cyclone-1999' the coastal fabric of Orissa has got devastated and thus seen extreme poverty. Extreme poverty exists when people are denied the opportunity to lead a long, healthy and productive life. Extreme poverty persists due to lack of mission-zeal and appropriate opportunities. An innovative attempt is here with demonstrated to address the rigid problems with solutions. Rural Orissa presents socially , culturally, economically and politically diverse environs wherein knowledge centers or knowledge gateways like Coastal Community Resource Center (CCRC) operate in. Building institutional linkages is an effective enabler in poverty reduction.

The CCRC, an innovative management model in the coastal village `Gupti' has taken care the aspirations of the coastal communities with implementation of alternate livelihood workshops, trainings and syndicated demonstrative activities like horticulture based kitchen garden promotion in all coastal households to divert their excessive attention on fish & crabs to green vegetables and leaves. Every cultivation in this regard is demonstrated in CCRC campus and then discussed with the communities of its procedure and care. It is found that the coastal communities have shown interest in preparing kitchen gardens in their own communities. It helps both way to make the waste land cultivable and the need of bio-vitamins from the green yield.

The CCRC project site is located in village `Gupti' on one of the entry parts of the National Park and `Ramsar-site' of Bhitarkanika Mangrove Ecosystem, an internationally know egg-laying arribada site of the endangered `Olive Ridley' Sea Turtles. It is 150 km away from Bhubaneswar, the capital of Orissa State in India. The fisher folks, local people, Bangaldesh Refugee settlers and others have been involved in this CCRC peoples' movement.

The Government of Orissa through its Forest & Environment Department has given a unused Tourist Rest House at village Gupti and its one acre vacant land for the construction of CCRC on May 5, 2005. With the support funding from the United Nations Environment Program of its Global Program of Action (UNEP-GPA) the CCRC is built after the signed MOU between Govt. of Orissa & Sandhan Foundation. A great deal of activities were undertaken to inform, equip and empower the coastal communities to choose alternate livelihood practices to curb their excessive dependency on the coastal wetland marine resources. A DVD documentation, “A Mouthful of Hope (ENG. 35 Min)” explains the works executed & achieved in the last one year.

CCRC's objectives are to disseminate new knowledge and experiences using ICT innovations and to develop field laboratory for school children and other students of Higher education to study the bio-diversity and natural processes in mangrove ecosystem.

Ms Laura Allen, a student from Wesleyan University of USA visited CCRC and spent 50 days to study CCRC and its efficacy last year June18-August 6, 2005. Mr. Jim Enright, South Asia Coordiator of MAP based at Thailand visited on November 16 the CCRC and expressed his satisfaction on the CCRC-design. Dr. Anjan Datta, Program Officer of UNEP-GPA, The Hague visited CCRC in last February 10 and supervised the work attainment with his satisfactory remarks. The State Govt. high officials have visited CCRC and appreciated the innovative mission on coastal resource conservation and management.

There was a week-long Inter Country Study Visit to CCRC-Gupti (May20-26, 2006) by seven Sri Lankan delegates followed by a Consultative Workshop on CCRC Performance & Evaluation held with the support and recognition of Commonwealth Foundation of UK.

The Community based Coastal / Mangrove Resource Center is designed to demonstrate ICT-led educational strategies to mobilize fishing communities in particular and other associated people in general to conserve and restore the mangrove ecosystem.

Initially the communities are in a hesitant mood because of no spectacular progress in govt. schemes and impracticable promises but after six months they incline to know the long-term developmental avenues for sustainable growth and prosperity. After the visit of Experts on varieties of fields and their person to person interaction have rejuvenated a zeal among the community folks to walk with CCRC project-mission and it is hoped that they feel settling their beliefs for progress and all round community development.

The communities are connected with knowledge and their fearful existence with ignorance and illiteracy have been charged with information on development, modification of their role to spread progress by hard work and sustainable endurance with nature. The coastal children are exposed to new invasion of ICT Learning with computer gadgets, laptops, syndicated art training to understand the contributions of mangroves and coastal-wetland-marine resources to their living and they are hopeful of their meaningful future and they will not loose it because of their bad ancestry.

Knowledge is an integral component of human development. Human beings transfer, imbibe, inherit, adopt, practice, nurture, share and develop numerous kinds of knowledge cultures throughout their life cycles. The first communication of knowledge is augmented by mothers who teach their children how to utter words, how to eat, how to walk and how to grow up. The ability to communicate using a language is perhaps the most fundamental aspect of knowledge culture. Speaking , writing and reading are , thus, the cornerstones of knowledge culture for any society. The term `knowledge' evokes variegated connotations as semantics of knowledge varies across academic disciplines-in schools of thoughts belonging to economics, information science, management, philosophy, psychology, sociology, etc.

Knowledge exists in multiple forms, communicated in variegated ways, however, at the outset, it is important to understand the knowledge needs that lead to sustainable development of local communities. One form of knowledge already persists within local communities - community workers recognize this form of knowledge as `local knowledge', termed as indigenous knowledge' in scientific literature. It is noted that local knowledge is often conceptualized or termed as `indigenous knowledge' in scientific literature, and exploited mainly by economists, environmentalists and sociologists to connote a specific knowledge set dealing largely with dynamic interaction between man and nature.

Development depends on the spread of scientific knowledge and adoption of scientific knowledge into traditional knowledge system and vice versa is a process that is evolutionary, intricate and dynamic in nature. An instance of such an interaction between indigenous and scientific knowledge is reflected in the agricultural extension services where agriculturists produce advanced farming techniques in the agricultural research institutes, which, then, transferred to farmers through extension services network. Development, therefore, depends on citizens' ability to adapt scientific knowledge and harmonize it with his or her own knowledge for practicing better way of living.

People cannot be reduced to single dimension as economic creatures. What makes them and the study of the development process fascinating is the entire spectrum through which human capabilities are expanded and utilized. People often value achievements that do not show up at all, or not immediately, in income or growth figures: greater access to knowledge, better nutrition and health services, more secure livelihoods, security against crime and physical violence, satisfying leisure hours, political and cultural freedom and sense of community activities. The objective of development is to create an enabling environment for people to enjoy long, healthy and creative lives. The CCRC in its inception has put emphasis enveloping all these ideas to spread a syndicated campaign with the scintillating slogan 'connecting community with knowledge'.

In furthering human capabilities, societies more often than not tend to exploit coastal natural resources-water, soil, air, mangrove vegetation, fossil fuel and biodiversity- in a rate faster than the nature can regenerate them for mankind. Preservation of natural resources as essential instruments of sustainable development has taken the centrality in modern development discourse soon after the Second World War. Concern over ever-increasing environmental degradation caused by adverse natural exploitation influenced development thinkers to introduce the concept of `sustainable human development'. To put this idea into practice no eye-catching demonstrative action-oriented methods ever used in this `super cyclone ravaged coastal areas. The innovative management model like CCRC at village `Gupti' of Bhitarkanika mangrove ecosystem is an uncommon and first attempt to inform and equip the coastal communities with the help of an `ICT-mission' to wise use the coastal-wetland-marine ecosystem of Orissa.

Poverty, population pressures, social inequity and the terms of trade are identified as prime agents of environmental degradation. The coastal areas of Orissa after the `super cyclone' in 1999 could have engaged propriety of attention to emulate new skill with pointers of appropriate demonstrative methodologies but to its utter disillusionment nothing could be made possible till date because of stale dreams and defocused policy frameworks. At this juncture, CCRC has brought a new vigor to attempt innovations of development in a structured format to educate the coastal communities with its village institution at Gupti. It is too early to be hopeful of its outcomes but it has tread a long way to win the confidence of the community folks to reap the benefits by introducing ICT avenues to diffuse new knowledge through electronic gadgets like computer, audio-visual accessories.

ICT stands for information and communication technology used both as singular and plural nouns. It is used almost simultaneously with information technology(IT). The term IT (and ITES or information technology enabled services) is used more in business contexts, where as ICT is used in development parlance. ICTs encompass technologies that can process different kinds of information (voice, video, audio, text and data) and facilitate different forms of communications among human agents, among humans and information systems, and among information systems. All these cook for the gain in knowledge which may be termed as modern innovations and human development indicators. The term `knowledge' in the context of human development recognize intangible information objects, which are communicable in multiple forms through multiple carriers and capable of instigating , engaging, inspiring human agencies to take active or inactive actions. Though at tomes knowledge is applied as a substitute of the term 'information' , they evoke different connotations. Information can be interpreted as purpose-oriented knowledge.

Acquiring knowledge, however, does not necessarily depend on other human capabilities such as reading or writing-acquiring knowledge as a basic human functioning is inherited- a child , for instance, learns to stay away from fire by experiencing the heat emanating from the fire. The illiterate old community woman, for instance, provides genealogy information to fellow villagers serving as the repository of collective memories for the village. The process for knowledge acquisition, sharing, reflecting is continuous and life-long for every human being-irrespective of his/her social, economic and cultural strata.

However, educational attainment enables individuals in the acquisition, reflections and sharing of knowledge that can be applied for better `being or doing'. If knowledge is to energize human capabilities expansion, because it has the capacity to do, knowledge objects need to be learnt, adopted, nurtured, practiced, and further cultivated in all aspects of human functioning. In a similar way decision-making in judicious appropriation and sustainable exploitations of assets depends on knowledge. Being `knowledgeable' by its very nature has been recognized as an end of human development; and, the state of `being knowledgeable' has been recognized seen as the means for attaining the goals of human development.

The notion of sustainable human development is neither an abstract nor achievable one, as many of development practitioners think. But in coastal situations of Orissa after the super cyclone -1999 many such thinking put to an uproar but finally through a small community level innovative model i.e. CCRC, probably many good and great things have happened in human development through ICT.

ICT as a mission it has undertaken a great deal of activities to inform and educate the coastal small fishers about the myriad contributions of marine micro-organisms that boost the coastal wetland-marine fish resources along the coast. If they catch only 250 gm of fish in one net-catch and damage the rest living micro creatures the natural resources are at a loss and their livelihood is at a stake. Through informative pictorials, video and audio programs they have been informed the intricacies of the sea lives and their responsibility for wise use the natural resources which could motivate them to grow as conservators in a very small period. The illiterate fisher folks in the presence of their young children are given information through ICT gadgets make all of them informed what they see through their years but unable to understand the charity of nature towards their sustenance. The day two could make them conscious and they go on saving the micro organisms in each of their catch and that is what make feel the empowerment of the coastal communities through ICT-knowledge connectivity.

The joint efforts of UNEP-GPA, IUCN-TRP, MAP, Govt. of Orissa & Sandhan Foundation on mangrove conservation and management in Orissa's coastal scenario will be the first of its caliber in whole of India. The strategies for the management of mangrove areas of Bhitarkanika has been meticulously implemented to improve socio-economic status of the coastal poor people and small fishers through enhancing the ecological status of the associated mangrove areas.

The CCRC has undertaken a great deal of awareness activities to educate the community folks through video film show on health & hygiene. The graphical design on sanitation has motivated them to have toilets in their household. The knowledge on this make them conscious to keep clean their domestic surroundings. The interpretation of technology in this regard equip them to learn the necessity of keeping the environment clean.

The syllabus based educational CDs on varieties of subjects inform and attract the community children to develop a regular study habits which is an achievements through ICT cabin of the CCRC. The knowledge-gain in this method is lucrative what the ignorant parents, small fishers community appreciate in coming close contact with ICT-mission of CCRC. The excessive dependency on fish & crab is regularly minimized and the women are interested in developing kitchen garden in their own premises to grow green leaves and vegetables. This package of knowledge was there earlier but through the help of ICT gadgets and continuous sensitization the coastal community folks know a great deal with furnished ideas. The knowledge on nutrition is disseminated to adhere priority so that children can grow up to lead healthy and productive lives in the most disadvantageous coastal situations. The CCRC in real sense commute this knowledge to the coastal community folks at par excellence.

The marginally educated and unemployed youth of the coastal villages throng in the CCRC campus everyday and through ICT gadgets they get syndicated training to grow independent small entrepreneurs. Some of them become self sufficient by getting into rural based livelihood practices with the loan from the State Bank of India. The idle youth is getting the directions to choose from a number of livelihood practices by coming to CCRC and getting exposed to varieties of ICT-stock documents. The new livelihood avenues allure them to understand the wise use of natural resources than to spoil nonsensically.

They are made convinced the purpose of natural resources conservation and their renewal for future generations. It is made possible using the ICT techniques to raise their knowledge base in the CCRC which is really uncommon in this most backward part of coastal Orissa.

Addressing gender inequality, to increase opportunities for women and to ensure that they have a say in decisions that affect the lives of themselves and their children is a phenomenal success through our CCRC mission. The coastal women are given training on tailoring and incense stick making to earn a livelihood and keep them engaged and not to depend on collecting the firewood, fish & crab from the coastal wetland and marine resources on daily basis damaging the virgin natural resources. All are equal and capable of dignified engagement that is what getting a practice through CCRC action packed activities.

With this actions and demonstrations the role and capacity of local organizations are strengthened to make communities more self-sufficient. The practiced strategies are to educate the coastal-poor on the wise-use of natural coastal wetland -marine resources by technological innovations with the CCRC that help translates the missions with a slogan “connecting community with knowledge”.