Technology for Community Empowerment

Marlon Parker is a Social Entrepreneur and an Information Technology Lecturer at Cape Peninsula University of Technology (CPUT) since October 2000.  He obtained his Masters degree in Information Technology (Cum Laude) and is currently busy with his PhD at CPUT. He is often invited by many organisations and institutions (UCT Graduate School of Business, University of Rhodes, schools, NGOs, corporate) across the country as guest speaker on ICT for Community Empowerment. Marlon also produced several research academic papers, supervises post-grad students and co-authored in a published book called “The social and economical impacts of e-commerce“.  He was also one of the judges for the 2008 E-commerce Awards and was nominated in 2009 as one of the Top Young South Africans by the Mail and Guardian. His passion for community development has influenced his research interests and he is currently working on a project titled “Using ICT as a change agent to empower citizens in a Community in Tension (CiT)^[1]” of which Advice Support Network using was birthed which serves more than 40,000 people across South Africa with social related issues using their mobile phones.

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[1] Parker, MB and Wills, G. Dr. (2008). “Community in Tension (CiT). University of Southampton, UK & Wealthy Mind Publishers, SA. ISBN: 978-0-620-42256-7.