How It Started: The Open Digital Village concept was developed & concieved by OVF Co-founder & OVF Ghana Country Director Kafui Prebbie. Several years ago he began to realise the trend emerging towards wireless technologies and saw that the notion of a digital village or telecentre was changing because of this. Recent collaborations with wireless innovators like World Summits for Free Information Infrastructures (WSFII) and Green WiFI, Muni Wireless, Meraki and many others have only reinforced the process. Most recently Kafui & OVF Founder Joy Tang's participation at the AirJaldi Summit further moved things towards the planning for the establishement of the first Open Digital Village in Winneba Ghana. At AJS, the idea was further discussed among the wsfii network there leading the development of a companion site for ODiV - OpenDiV.

Founding Partners: Open Digital Villages are a project initiated by oneVIllage Foundation along with its key partner, the International Free & Open Source Software Foundation (iFOSSF), University of Education Winneba Ghana (UEW), Wireless Ghana, a umbrella group called the World Summits for Free Information Infrastructures and Commonwealth of Learning. See Partners Page for more.

What ODiVs Do: ODiVs are designed as an R&D focused projects that will move towards financial self-sustainability by building its research programs around the formation of commercially successful businesses such as for example a cybercafe / printshop. The need make ODiVs self-funding will be balanced with the need to provide services to these commmunities. Under this model, the primary source of revenue will be cyber café, consulting and business development and incubation services. See Services Page for more.

Centers will be designed to incorporate best practices not only from the ICT4D movement but also the sustainable development movement as well. The eventual goal is to make these centers as showcases for integrated development approach that includes all relevant disruptive technologies needed for community empowerment, thus we use the term ICT for Sustainable Development (ICT4SD). See our Programs Page for more details.

Goals: We hope to in this process to complete 4 major things -

1. Infuse technology into the educational systems through community learning: This centre will serve as a technology ground for youth to learn basic technology skills, software applications and share best practices.

2. Bridge the digital divide: A goal of the “CatchITYoung” project is to introduce 30 computers with Internet access to the community via the creation of a Digital Village. We want to create better ways of living and give the underprivileged the opportunity to fulfil their dreams.

3. Promote Open Source software, products and commitment to helping others: The creation of this facility will be the first of its kind in Ghana and allow the participants to access and develop confidence in Open Source Software applications and will raise the public view of Open Source platform positively.

4. Demonstrate ODiVs as budding Multipurpose Community and Unity Centre hubs that expedite the process of replicating sustainable human habitats and production systems to other parts of the world: Information and Communications Technologies are pervasive and have the power to transform these communities and their citizens.

Long Term Picture: Our plan is to develop the initial ODiV in Winneba into a global network of ODiVs that can work together to promote effective ICT4SD approaches. See the Vision/Outlook Page for more on this.