Dear GKD Members, Warm greetings. I take this issue very seriously for the simple reason that digital divide has many forms or different names but has huge benefits for those who are not part of it. At the end of the day there is a huge divide out there between the 21st century Information Knowledge have's and have not's. And those of us whether we are living in the North or South are affected by it.
The divide is big in the North as much as we would like to ignore it. Also for the South the sad situation is that we re still debating whether the issue between should computers come before food and water is still hapenning. Digital divide if defined in different ways is about the tools created globally by the wealth of 21st century knowledge, human resources, communication and information availabe for all of us to benefit in different ways. As a result of this there are opportunities for all of us to make use of that wealth of global resources for our own benefits be it for decision making, teaching, just communicating with someone acrros the world about your issues, empowering communities at grass root level who have no power of their own and so on. I would say using email as a tool to bridge the digital divide is one of the wonders of this divide. For a small country like Somaliland the marriage of email and internet radio coupled with the internet has changed the minds of normal people who have no clue what digital divide is all aout. But yet who have embraced the technology as part of their lives. Every information they get comes from the internet and it reaches them somehow. This country due to lack of recognition do not have basic postal services but yet the technology has replaced their information in a way that is unique to their lives. I got hold of this report which I found very useful from bridges.org and the urls is: http://www.bridges.org/spanning/ I would recommend anyone who is interested in finding information about the digital divide to look at what this organisation has done. It is very informative. You can also check your own milestones against those initiatives and see how far you have gone. We also tend to undermine our efforts as individuals, organisation or even being part of this list how much we can help and advance those who need basic help. Not because they don't have anything but just need that extra bush for something that will change their lives for ever. I thank all the list members who came forward to help with the ICT for Edna Maternity Hospital. It just shows just a simple shout or help for assistance can help to change the lives of the poor people in a big way. I would say this initiative is one part of bridging the digital divide. At the grass root level there is going to be a huge need for people to be trained in using basic IT. Then after that once people empowered in using the technology the next step will be to get into the global network of Information knowledge and channel that towards your own needs. Digital divide has come a long way and there are noble people out there who are campaigning for the lack of basic understanding of what digital divide means and how can we all harness it to help our global citizens. But at the end the more positive digital divide initiatives that we share and also discuss issues that puzzle us no matter how small or unimporatant we may think it is, then it means we are doing something about. My main worry is those who are not discussing the digital divide and are not even aware of what digital divide is or means. IT and Information Literacy is an important tool for the 21st century to empower those who are not part of the digital have's. There are a lot of people who are highly qualified but due to lack of IT and Information Literacy can not make the right decisions that affect those whom they would like to empower. Since they don't know they can not empower. Please visit the following url for a conference on this issue to find out about its updates: http://www.iteu.gla.ac.uk/IT&ILit2002/Net/index.html I hope more people to come forward and share with everyone how they helped towards the DD issue so that others can learn from them. Warm regards. Mrs. Lulu Todd http://www.somalilandforum.com http://www.tawakal.co.uk ------------ ***GKD is solely supported by EDC, an NGO that is a GKP member*** 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/>
