Re: [GKD] Invitation to Content for Community Needs Programme (India)
Dear Colleagues, I wish I had the time and money to be with you in New Delhi at the end of the month. 100,000 telecenters is progress, but how much depends on the architecture of the information and the infrastructure of the communication component. How do the content providers know what information is going to be the most valuable in the community where the kiosks are to be located? In the main, we choose from afar (I am in New York) and decide what information a villager needs, and when it comes to local information what we know is rather a small subset of what the village already knows. I was in Afghanistan about 12 years ago, and British World Service was planning an agriculture education services to help tell farmers what best to do. I was at a meeting where content was being discussed, and I believe the idea was dropped when local people pointed out that there were significant differences on farming practices from the north side of the valley to the south side of the valley. Bluntly put, how the hell were the experts wherever going to get planting dates right? Local people know a lot more than we give them credit for. The Transparency and Accountability Network (Tr-Ac-Net) database has a different information architecture than the British World Service idea .. Tr-Ac-Net seeks to help get key information from the community onto the record so that this information can help the community attract the resource assistance it needs for socio-economic progress. When there is management information available about community progress, and the various activities that have gone on to get this progress, then there can be efficiency improvement in the use of resources. Will the 100,000 telecenters being planned make it possible for villagers and community leaders to communicate with a web enabled database system like the one envisioned by Tr-Ac-Net, or will the information flow merely be top-down. I will argue that information flows in both directions, as well as horizontally between local communities and local people, is several orders-of-magnitude more valuable than the simple top-down approach. I would be very interested to have other people's views on the OneWorld / Mission 2007 project, and the Tr-Ac-Net vision for a community database. Sincerely, Peter Burgess Peter Burgess Tr-Ac-Net in New York 212 772 6918 [EMAIL PROTECTED] The Transparency and Accountability Network With Kris Dev in Chennai India and others in South Asia, Africa and Latin America http://tr-ac-net.blogspot.com On 6/17/2005, Veronica Peris wrote: OneWorld South Asia's (OWSA) http://www.oneworld.net/ under the aegis of Mission 2007 http://www.mission2007.org/ would like to invite you to a Content for Community Needs Programme meeting (30 June and 1 July 2005; India International Centre, New Delhi.) OneWorld will introduce the concept of 100,000 Telecentres and the opportunities that exist for content developers/providers in the immediate future. One of the practical ways of using ICTs, we feel, is to set up Telecentres (Rural Advocacy Centres/Information Kiosks) that contain information relevant to the needs of the rural/urban communities. Such Telecentres would facilitate Communities' access to information/facilities/services without their having to waste any time in procuring/accessing the same. To the worker at the community level, having to procure such information would mean in real terms, having to drop out of work for at least a day -- often forgo a days wages -- and the resultant food for him/her self and the family. For this purpose there is an urgent need to digitise a content repository for community needs to reach out to rural/urban India at large, as well as tailor the data to the respective needs of the communities. ..snip... ***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/
Re: [GKD] RFI: How Can A Grassroots Project Obtain Financing From Private Donors In Rich Countries?
Dear Arrigo: I am interested in the topic you present, with respect to finding funding for grassroots endeavors, and I see your question has also generated a good deal of response. I did a bit of internet searching a while back trying to assist a friend in South Africa who was starting an NGO for rural women's rights. I have also become aware of sustainable projects in Africa that are in dire need of funding, through participation in an international biotechnologist organization, You discuss many possibilities. I think it is necessary to define which possibility you are talking about for each project. Some foundations will fund non-profits, but not individuals; I found one recently that specifically only wanted to fund entrepreneurs, not non-profits. Some want to fund only those in the start-up phase, trying to obtain non-profit or NGO status. The specifics of the group and the issues they are addressing are key to matching with an appropriate donor. In the U.S., unless the foundation is funding start-up organizations, a foreign NGO should benefit by finding a non-profit 501(c)3 to act as a go-between, at least if the donor wants to be able to claim a tax exemption for the charitable contribution. Being able to write off a contribution as a tax exemption is pretty important if the person is making a large donation. They can approach non-profits with similar goals, and I think the non-profit might take a percentage to act as a go-between, but that is understandable. All of the above relates to the existing status quo. That being said, I am also interested in trying to create alternative funding channels so donors can directly fund sustainable projects from the bottom-up, instead of traditional top-down projects. Currently, people in need of funding need to do quite a bit of sleuthing to find funding sources. Can we create an alternative? I am imagining a website which showcases a diversity of projects through photos and brief descriptions (women's rights, sustainable water purification, permaculture, medicinal gardens, etc.) so that individuals who want to donate can get an overview of a diversity of sustainable projects around the world and choose specific projects they would like to donate directly to, without the mediation of individual foundations. I think this would serve the dual purpose of offering a new vision of a sustainable world, while helping donors feel more personally connected and involved with projects to which they are donating financial support. I appreciate the thoughts and feedback of others in the group. Best regards, Gena Fleming Traditional Chinese Medicine Website: http://www.plantbyplant.com On Tuesday, June 14, 2005, Arrigo della Gherardesca asked: How can a small entity (say in rural India or Africa) - it could be a women's cooperative, a small local NGO, or even an existing company or a single entrepreneur (but the same could hold for a Local Government) - if they have a viable project (both economically and socially), tap the rich countries donor and grant opportunities (Foundations, Corporate donors, etc.)? Would they have to go through a credible, well established international NGO? And in the absence of one, what could they do? ***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/
Re: [GKD] Local Languages, ICT, and Indigenous Knowledge
On Friday, 10 June 2005, Donald Z. Osborn wrote: There is not a huge demand for local language applications right now. The claim that there is no demand for a product is quite often wrong, especially when based on supposition rather than investigation. Every publisher that looked at The Wonderful Wizard of Oz turned it down on the grounds that there was no demand for American fairy tales. The only evidence they cited was that there were no American fairy tales in print--no surprise if every publisher refused to publish them. Frank Baum had to pay for the initial print run himself, even after he had several other successful titles. He eventually wrote 13 more books in the series, by popular demand, and it was continued after his death with more than 20 others. In every case involving language support in software that I have investigated, there is huge latent demand, but it is not expressed openly because everybody knows they can't get it yet. An example is Yiddish-language discussion groups, where the question of writing in Hebrew alphabet rather than Latin transliteration comes up every few years, and has still not been acted on due to lack of wide enough distribution of suitable software. (But we're close this time! Some of us have started a Free/Open Source project for Yiddish support in Linux, Mac OS, and Windows.) Your comment is also like saying that mathematicians wouldn't want to typeset their own work in the days before Donald Knuth's TeX typesetting software. It turns out that almost all mathematicians and physicists are willing or even eager to create their papers in TeX. In fact TeX has been an important option for many languages that were not well supported in Windows, Mac OS, and Unix until quite recently. Unfortunately, TeX is not suited to casual use. From http://www.tug.org/tex-archive/help/Catalogue/bytopic.html # Multilingual Support * Misc: The babel Package * Multilingual Bibliographies * Arabic * Armenian * Bangla and Asamese * Basque * Bengali * Burmese * Casyl * Cherokee * Chinese, Japanese, Korean * Coptic * Croatian * Czech and Slovene * Cyrillic * Devanagari * Dutch * English * Epi-Olmec * Ethiopian * French * German * Greek * Gurmukhi * Hebrew * Hungarian * Icelandic * Indian * Inuktitut * Italian * Japanese * Korean * Latin * Malayalam * Manju * Mongolian * Polish * Portuguese * Romanian * Russian * Sanskrit * Sinhala * Slovene * Somali * Spanish * Swedish * Tamil * Telugu * Tibetan * Turkish * Ukrainian * Vietnamese * Misc I went into all of this in detail in three market research studies, one on technical publishing software, one on non-Latin fonts, and one on the impact of Unicode. My computer, running Debian Linux, has keyboard layouts or IMEs for 26 of the 30 major modern writing systems, lacking Tibetan, Mongolian, Sinhala, and Thaana. All of these are in Unicode, and are supported in Free fonts. I know several people who can create a keyboard for any language, and I'm learning to do it myself, so that I can work on keyboards for Yiddish, Pali, Yoruba, and Klingon to begin with. -- Edward Cherlin Generalist activist--Linux, languages, literacy and more A knot! Oh, do let me help to undo it! --Alice in Wonderland http://cherlin.blogspot.com ***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/
[GKD] Exploring Innovation from a Child and Leadership Perspective
Dear GKD Members, Our discussions have been so fruitful...the seeds of some wonderful solutions and insights into how to deliver progress. I would like to propose a bit of a diversion... I am convinced that what we are all seeking is 'innovation.' In fact, at the Malaysia conference (and thereafter), I continue to suggest that we substitute the word 'innovation' for the 'I' in ICT. Let me invite others to view a conversation that was recently held on KnowledgeBoard of the European Union - their portal for knowledge, innovation and collaboration. We have been fortunate to have our new book 'In Search of Innovation' selected for the June Book-of-the-Month on KnowledgeBoard. You can read the book, reviews and Foreword by Leif Edvinsson at: http://www.knowledgeboard.com/cgi-bin/item.cgi?id=140072 The transcript of the dialogue can be read here: http://www.knowledgeboard.com/cgi-bin/item.cgi?id=142321 You can see how we would like to explore the innovation process - from a child and leadership perspective. Consider others who you consider innovators: (1) What made them successful? (2) What ideas have you had that have been successfully innovated? (3) What are the best ideas you have had that should have been better received?! Ours is a world to innovate... Debra P.S. For those interested in sampling initiatives from around the world to develop Knowledge Innovation Zones, please visit: www.inthekzone.com. *** Debra M. Amidon Founder and CEO ENTOVATION International Ltd. 2 Reading Avenue, Suite 300 Wilmington, MA 01887 USA T: 978/988-7995 F: 978/863-0124 E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] URL: http://www.entovation.com Innovating our future...together. ***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/
Re: [GKD] Invitation to Content for Community Needs Programme (India)
Dear Veronica, We've developed an open source application that you would be most welcome to use at no cost that would enable you to catalog and disseminate such digital resources. The one challenge would be to develop a taxonomy of categories and subcategories by which you want to catalog information on community needs. For some examples of portals based on this free application, please go to www.edreform.net It also is possible, at no cost, to put your own organizational name(s) and logo(s) on the given portal so that all users would understand which organization(s) have been involved in compiling the content. We developed this application based on our conviction that it needed to be easier for expert communities to rapidly, freely and easily disseminate trustworthy content on effective practices. The portal application enables any user to nominate a resource, thus allowing one or more editors to determine which nominated resources are accepted into the framework and ensuring that the resource is properly catalogued. Please let me know if this is of interest. It's fairly easy to train someone to use the application as an editor -- to create the cataloguing categories and to determine when to admit a resource and how to quickly catalog it. Regards, Bob McLaughlin Robert T. McLaughlin, Ph.D. Executive Director National Institute for Community Innovations 235 Main Street Montpelier, Vermont 05602-2410 USA Tel. (802) 229-1742 Cell (802) 249-1159 Fax (802) 229-2056 www.nici-mc2.org www.edreform.net www.vlibrary.org On Friday, June 17, 2005, Veronica Peris wrote: OneWorld South Asia's (OWSA) http://www.oneworld.net/ under the aegis of Mission 2007 http://www.mission2007.org/ would like to invite you to a Content for Community Needs Programme meeting (30 June and 1 July 2005; India International Centre, New Delhi.) OneWorld will introduce the concept of 100,000 Telecentres and the opportunities that exist for content developers/providers in the immediate future. One of the practical ways of using ICTs, we feel, is to set up Telecentres (Rural Advocacy Centres/Information Kiosks) that contain information relevant to the needs of the rural/urban communities. Such Telecentres would facilitate Communities' access to information/facilities/services without their having to waste any time in procuring/accessing the same. To the worker at the community level, having to procure such information would mean in real terms, having to drop out of work for at least a day -- often forgo a days wages -- and the resultant food for him/her self and the family. For this purpose there is an urgent need to digitise a content repository for community needs to reach out to rural/urban India at large, as well as tailor the data to the respective needs of the communities. Given this backdrop, OWSA with more than 500 organisations including NGOs, donors, multilateral organization, private sector, media, academicians and governments as its partners, attempts to provide a database that answers the needs of the grassroots and enhances their quality of life. However, it can soon be realised the task is enormous while the need is immediate -- so we do what we know best -- call on our partners and colleagues who have amongst them a pool of resources, which we could then collate in a content repository for community needs. This definitely would be an ongoing process, as data/information is always being made available. ..snip... ***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/
