Dear GKD Members, Sender: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Precedence: bulk Reply-To: gkd@milhouse.edc.org
Today is the second official day of the Summit and the energy level has only increased! Some of the highlights: * The ICT4All section has booths from around the globe, from the Italian Trade Commission and others like it, to the huge booths of Intel, Microsoft, Sun and other commercial players, to the even more enormous GKP booth and some other international organizations like UNDP. And of course there are the smaller booths of local NGOs from Cuba to Romania to Kenya. * One of the most interesting sessions was sponsored by the Datamation Foundation, of India. One panelist described some activities they conducted in India -- they met with the leaders of the local community and identified what information the *men* needed. Then they trained local girls to provide the info as a fee-based service. The men's opposition to ICT training for girls melted away when they realised the benefits they could get from the girls' new skills. They then partnered with UNESCO and Intel to share their experiences and lessons. Datamation Foundation itself has conducted a wonderful project that set up ICT training centers for women in largely Moslem communities. The Foundation staff met with the families of the women to convince them of the value of ICT training, and garnered the backing of a sympathetic local Imam, who gave them a room in his maddrasah (school for boys) for the girls' ICT training. The parents could hardly argue that the ICT training was improper for the girls when the Imam himself was providing the space! The Imam also connected the Foundation with other sympathetic Imams who also helped get centers established. I'll say more about this interesting project in future messages. * UNDP ICTDAR is a new program using ICT for development in the Arab Region. Based in Cairo, it is partnering with local organisations to implement a number of projects using ICT in four areas: (1) poverty reduction and employment creation; (2) documenting children and women's rights to reduce violence against women and to empower women; (3) strengthening small and medium enterprises by building kits to help SMEs use ICT effectively to increase productivity; (4) e-government portals for the countries in which they work. They are also creating community access centers in rural areas (approximately $100,000/center). Current projects are in Lebanon, Egypt and Tunisia. ICTDAR has a very small core team (4-5 people) and welcome ideas for partnering with local organizations that are working within ICTDAR's line of action (see www.ICTDAR.org for more info on their lines of action). If you are a local organisation interested in exploring a partnership with ICTDAR, please contact Najat Rochdi, Program Director, <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> or Ziad I. Haddara <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>. Describe your organisation, skills and areas of activity, what activity you are proposing and how it fits in their lines of action, any resources (including "in kind") you bring to the activity and the outcomes you expect to achieve. * One of the areas that continues to show little innovation (IMHO) is telecenters. Telecentre.org held a session, based on "speed dating model" in which 9 telecenters from around the world (funded I think by IDRC) stood in various parts of a large room, and the attendees split up among the telecenter presenters. Thus, each telecenter presented their experience to a small group for 5 minutes, and then all the groups shifted to another presenter (a kind of "musical chairs" from presenter to presenter). Unfortunately, the telecenters all continue to struggle with the same problems we've heard for the past decade: difficulty generating revenue and surviving; if any revenue is generated, it is barely enough to keep a small staff so the telecenter continues to rely on donor money for any new "activities." There IS a new model, the e-BIZ model, from Macedonia, which is both sustainable and helps hundreds of SMEs to grow. I'll describe it in a future message. * The Dputy Prime Minister of Israel, who was born in Tunisia and left the country 40 years ago to move to Israel, spoke to all of the delegates to the formal WSIS session but made a special appeal to Israel's Arab neighbors: "Let us talk, share, cooperate and help each other. Let us cooperate in research development... and serve as a model for all peace loving nations" so that those who want violence have less ability to promote fighting among these countries. He went on to say, "Let us put political differences aside. Normalization will benefit everyone." He ended with a saying in Arabic: Time goes as fast as the sand slips through our fingers," appealing to Tunisia to take leadership for peace and normalization. * The formal WSIS Internet governance agreement: Well, in the view of some, "The US Won," though those who think an international bureaucracy would not help promote Internet innovation may think everyone won. Despite pressure from a group led by Saudi Arabia, Iran, Brazil and China (though China was relatively quiet), to establish a new international body over which all countries had some control, the delegates agreed that ICANN would continue to manage top level domains and root zone file management (IP address locations, IP portal numbers) under US government authority. The decision came when it was clear that the US was not going to waiver on this issue and the Chair recommended the US position. Nonetheless, there was also a new initiative to establish a Forum of private sector and civil society organizations who would operate on an equal footing with ICANN, and would deal with more generic "social, cross-cutting, emerging" issues. However, it is unclear who would fund such a thing and how it would operate. The EU added some vague language which expressed the intention to reform the existing mechanism but it's unclear who would do what. In the end, ICANN keeps its responsibilities and there's a general expression that if some countries or organisations feel they are responsible for some part of Internet governance and make a commitment to enforce compliance, that they are free to do so. It's worth noting that there was a persistent argument from the anti-ICANN folks saying that a "private California company" is controlling the Internet -- assuming incorrectly that ICANN is a for-profit firm because it is incorporated (in the US, nonprofit organisations are also incorporated). Even when this was corrected repeatedly, the rumor persisted, even in some of the press and other media. Well, that's probably as much as you can deal with now. More updates to come, e.g., regarding the USAID-sponsored business roundtable. Cheers, Janice ------------ ***GKD is solely supported by EDC, a Non-Profit Organization*** To post a message, send it to: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To subscribe or unsubscribe, send a message to: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>. In the 1st line of the message type: subscribe gkd OR type: unsubscribe gkd Archives of previous GKD messages can be found at: <http://www.edc.org/GLG/gkd/>
