The Reconstructed Living Lab is one of ten in South Africa, and the first one in the Western Cape. The project has grown out of collaboration between Cape Peninsula University of Technology (CPUT), a community organisation Impact Direct Ministries (IDM), and the Bridgetown Civic Organisation. It has features that are unique in living labs as it is community led and is based in a social deprived area in Cape Town.

Athlone is situated on the Cape Flats of the Western Cape in Cape Town, South Africa. It is today known for two features, the new football stadium and the obsolete power towers which dominate the area. The society is described by Parker (2008) as a community in tension. Factors for the grounds of tension include: lack of economical development (e.g. unemployment, inflation); Social inequality (e.g. lack of social services,) Lack of education and lack of appropriateness and use of technology (e.g. technology not being utilised fully within communities for its intended use). Athlone has all these social problems, and is plagued with violence, drugs and gangsterism.

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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