Re: [GKD] Why aren't more people online?
My response to John Lawrence would be to say work aggressively to extend and put in place the necessary infrastructure where the demand is evidenced. In fact, that is what my organizaiton, the Tutor/Mentor Conneciton (T/MC) is attempting to do. Our focus is on the entire universe of CBOs who are offering various forms of tutoring, mentoring and school-to-career services to inner city youth living in Chicago. We have built a database of more than 370 service providers and use GIS maps to show where thos providers are located in relation to high concentrations of poverty, poorly performing schools, and incidents of youth violence. Our www.tutormentorconnection.org web site serves as a virtual library anyone can go to for information that they might use to build the capacity of any tutor/mentor program, in Chicago, or any where in the country. On August 1 we'll kick off a 7th annual Chicagoland volunteer recruitment campaign, with Mrs. George Ryan, First Lady of Illinois, serving as honorary chair. This campaign will peak the first weekend after Labor Day when more than 100 CBOs will host displays at at least 20 different volunteer fair sites around the city. The goal is to build visibility that draws volunteers, donors, tech partners, etc to every single program in the city's poorest neighborhoods. An on-line directory on our web site enables volunteers and donors to find these programs even if they don't go to the volunteer fairs. You can read about this campaign, and a year-round schedule of follow up activities that are intended to help agencies keep these volunteers and convert them to leaders and more effective tutors/mentors. Visit www.tutormentorconnection.org You can also get involved with this campaign, as a communicator, or business partner to any of these programs. You can also help duplicate this in other cities. The more aggressive we are, and the more personal responsibility each of us takes for the result, the more likely we are to put technology, as well as mentors and operating dollars, in places where help is most needed. You can also document your actions, if you choose to take them, at www.tutormentorexchange.net. This is an on-line system where various stakeholders can document what they are doing to achieve an organization's mission. We've been piloting this for the past year and you can now view a six-month report of 200 actions which have been documented from Sept. 2000 to March 2001. Without accountability it is unlikely we'll have the type of on-going actions that will ever bridge the economic divides that separate the poor from the rich. I hope you all take a look and that some of you join in this campaign. My response to John Lawrence would be to say work aggressively to extend and put in place the necessary infrastructure where the demand is evidenced. In fact, that is what my organizaiton, the Tutor/Mentor Conneciton (T/MC) is attempting to do. Our focus is on the entire universe of CBOs who are offering various forms of tutoring, mentoring and school-to-career services to inner city youth living in Chicago. We have built a database of more than 370 service providers and use GIS maps to show where thos providers are located in relation to high concentrations of poverty, poorly performing schools, and incidents of youth violence. Our www.tutormentorconnection.org web site serves as a virtual library anyone can go to for information that they might use to build the capacity of any tutor/mentor program, in Chicago, or any where in the country. On August 1 we'll kick off a 7th annual Chicagoland volunteer recruitment campaign, with Mrs. George Ryan, First Lady of Illinois, serving as honorary chair. This campaign will peak the first weekend after Labor Day when more than 100 CBOs will host displays at at least 20 different volunteer fair sites around the city. The goal is to build visibility that draws volunteers, donors, tech partners, etc to every single program in the city's poorest neighborhoods. An on-line directory on our web site enables volunteers and donors to find these programs even if they don't go to the volunteer fairs. You can read about this campaign, and a year-round schedule of follow up activities that are intended to help agencies keep these volunteers and convert them to leaders and more effective tutors/mentors. Visit www.tutormentorconnection.org You can also get involved with this campaign, as a communicator, or business partner to any of these programs. You can also help duplicate this in other cities. The more aggressive we are, and the more personal responsibility each of us takes for the result, the more likely we are to put technology, as well as mentors and operating dollars, in places where help is most needed. You can also document your actions, if you choose to take them, at www.tutormentorexchange.net. This is an on-line system where various stakeholders can document what they are doing to achieve an organization's
Re: [GKD] Why aren't more people online?
Hi all, We at AWO are pondering the same issue: Our editorial on 8 July: The Internet, e-commerce and knowledge nations have become buzzwords. Journalists, politicians, business people all spout and mouth the same term and sport the same jig: the Internet will liberate us and provide for all. It was to be the great leveller - empowering and enabling everyone. The Internet and its accompanying technologies are ostensibly new technologies enabling the construction, organisation and dissemination of information and knowledge. The relative freedom and speed of communication it offers provide and unrivalled mechanism for the production and dissemination of information. In countries with strict media censorship, the Internet provides an alternative sources of news and views. The question remains: Is this great enthusiasm and optimism over the web just hype? While we can see the potential of the web, we have to realise that this same technological wonder will be the bane of many poorer countries which have little access to it and doing catch-up with the better developed infrastructure in wealthier countries. When access and inequality issues are raised, corporations typically deride the critics. They claim that the Internet, instead of restricting options, enables greater accessibility. But as the development of the Internet progresses, there is now a chorus of growing concern that the Internet may actually accentuate the gap between the poor and the rich, men and women, across and within countries and marginalise millions of people. And indeed this condition has caused concern and prompted both national governments and international agencies to develop policies addressing this issue of the digital divide. According to the International Labor Organisation World Employment Report 2001, despite the communications revolution given the speed of diffusion in wealthy and poor countries, the information and communication (ICT) revolution is resulting in a widening global digital divide. Vast areas of the globe remain technologically disconnected from the benefits of the electronic marvels revolutionising life, work and communication in the digital era. Perhaps for those living in the west, it is harder to envisage the issue and problems in developing countries. While developing countries grapple with the high costs of technology and Internet access, consumers in the west have access to wide ranging services like cable access and broadband services. A few statistics will easily illustrate this gap. There are more telephones in New York City than in all of rural Asia, more Internet accounts in London than in all of Africa. As many as 80% of the world population have never made a phone call. The Internet connects hundreds of millions of computers globally but recent statistics put the percentage of people having Internet access at 6%. Of course this divide is felt most acutely in Africa, Asia and Latin America. About three billion people in the world do not have access to adequate sanitation and over one billion people lack access to safe drinking water (UNDP 2000). Another one billion live in absolute poverty with a subsistence rate of less than US1 dollar a day (UNDP 2001). Access to the net in Asia is a real problem for many. Costs are high for both access and also purchase of equipment. Internet users tend to use it at work or come from the middle-class and well-educated professionals. Apart from the costs, this access and participation in the global information society presumes some level of education without which the vast treasures of information and knowledge become meaningless. Is there anything that can do to arrest this increasing divide? The World Bank is bent on launching its global development gateway - the mother of all portals. Or perhaps we should launch more community-based access to the web? How feasible can these proposals and projects be? One can always plan for a computer in every village but does that address the underlying problems? It does not address the issue of content production, control and management. It does not address the issue of corporations and governments who control broadcasting and transmission rights. It fails to respond to the issue of control of infrastructure and the development of associated new technologies. There are also numerous other issues - the issues of governments, regulations, power and governance. Even if all villages have access to a computer, who controls access at the village level? Who designs the project for them and if governments are repressive, what does that mean for information access and dissemination? In reality, the poor will languish in hyped-up cyberspace while questions of access, the barriers of language (if not addressed) are not resolved. The reality is that many will be cut off from participation: language barriers; literacy issues? and reliance on middle men or women will only further aggravate access issues. Notwithstanding the
[GKD] Bytes For All - July 2001
_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/ _/ _/ B y t e s F o r A l l --- http://www.bytesforall.org _/ Making Computing Relevant to the People of South Asia _/ _/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/ JULY 2001 ISSUE * SECOND ANNIVERSARY ISSUE Thanks to all who have helped us reach 2! BytesForAll was founded in July 1999. -- IN ADDITION TO creating the info-structure, we have to create a knowledge society that is not only computer literate but has the capacity to create content and application solutions in order to leverage on ICT for development. Meeting this requirement represents one of the biggest challenges that developing countries face in the information age. -- Mahathir Bin Mohamad, prime minister of Malaysia. ** HINDI WEBSITE ON CAREERS: The first Hindi website on careers has become functional. Editor of careerduniya.com Meena Bhandari, has said that more than 100 million students and youths would benefit from the career-related information in Hindi. The website provides updated facts on various competitive examinations dealing with subjects such as computers, management, commerce and arts and on courses and scholarships worldwide. Link: careerduniya.com ** KEEPING ABREAST WITH IT IN SOUTH ASIA: S-Asia-IT, a mailing/discussion list for IT developments in South Asia -- Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka -- is intended to provide a forum for those interested in the development and use of information technology in the South Asian context. Its specific interest is in advancing information technologies to support equitable social and economic development in the region, recognising that the development of information and communication technologies, particularly Internet connectivity, are important tools in this work by activists, donors, NGOs, government and the private sector. To subscribe to the S-Asia-IT mailing list send mail to the address [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the following command in the body of e-mail message: subscribe s-asia-it The S-Asia-IT mailing list is archived at http://www.apnic.net/wilma-bin/wilma/s-asia-it ** I.T HELPS THE MILKMAN TOO: Akashganga - using simple but appropriate information technology, to facilitate timely collection of milk and thereby generating, higher profits for the rural milk producers has won the ICT Stories Competition 2001 from India. This project was conceptualized more than four years ago, when IT awareness in the country was limited to big urban centers only. The fact that illiterate and semi-literate farmers accepted the system and are operating it confidently, is an achievement by itself. Computers are being used for a very basic activity like collection of milk for the past so many years and rural masses are comfortable with it and have reposed their confidence in it. Local entrepreneurs could spot the latent potential and have spread the system in the remote areas, through diligent work and timely support. They kept their system, without any monetary compensation for weeks together, for the DCS to try out and feel comfortable with it. The popular and widespread usage of AKASHGANGA breaks the myth that ICT will not help in solving the day-to-day problems of the rural masses. On the contrary, the farmers are very open to adopting new technologies (without being granted any kind of subsidies!), provided it delivers tangible benefits. Read about AKASHGANGA at http://www.iicd.org/base/story_search_read?id=105 ** VILLAGES ONLINE PLANNED IN PAKISTAN: ePoor.org a non-profit civil society initiative has developed a flagship Programme in Pakistan by the name of Villages Online (VOL). The VOL (Villages Online) initiative of ePoor.org, is spearheaded to change the development scene, increase social well-being, and expand opportunities of wealth generation by making IT relevant to community needs at the village levels. The philosophy of ePoor.org is based on the highly successful efforts of community development led by such pioneers as Akhter Hameed Khan and Shoaib Sultan Khan. These efforts revolve around the creation of social capital to enhance the coping and adaptive capacities and strategies of the poor. Details: Zubair Faisal Abbasi. CEO/Project Director, ePoor.org Waheed Plaza, West 52, First Floor, Blue Area, Islamabad, Pakistan. Ph: 092-051-2201484, 0303-7759274 [EMAIL PROTECTED] ** TECHNOLOGY EMPOWERMENT: Check out the Technology Empowerment Network. http://www.techempower.net The strength of TEN ultimately resides in the size and quality of our member network. And you
