EcoTour

oneVillage Ecotour Service and Learning Program

Joy supports Taiwan volunteers @ NTHU to introduce oneVillage EcoTour Service & Learning Project

Background

This is the 3rd year (2008 - 2010) of oneVillage’s EcoLiving Service and Learning Program. Our first educational university partner was Taiwan National Tsing Hua University, starting in 2008. In 2009, Santa Clara University in Silicon Valley joined us through the Global Women Leadership Network where Joy is also a founding member of.

Ecotour Design

The National Tsing Hua University International Volunteer Students Program provides support for students to travel to foreign countries for one month to get service learning experiences focusing on such things as Information Development and Digital Philanthropy. The Program embraces a holistic approach that gives the students hands-on experiences in fundraising, planning including strategy and logistics, research, field work, culture sensibility/respect, documentation and program/project evaluation skills. With this program, we show how to disseminate best practices using the example of the Winneba Open Digital Village in Ghana. We also raise money from a variety of other sponsors as well including high profile companies in Taiwan in the IT sector. The students through their practical experiences in the month long program begin to get a sense of the complex issues related to international and digital/telecom development that oneVillage Initiative is designed to address.

Current Year Program Focus Areas & Themes

The 2010 EcoTour Service and Learning Program (EcoFun) adopts the practices of social enterprise in terms of team building, program management, outcome evaluation and sustainability. NTHU Ghana Ecotour Team 2010 is currently working with Center of Innovative Incubation, NTHU for effective approaches geared towards the businesses that oneVillage identifies as partners towards ‘radical philanthropy’ and social enterprise movement.

Currently, oneVillage EcoLiving Service and Learning Project has the following tracks:

  1. Rural development and environment
  2. Digital archiving indigenous cultures
  3. Citizen journalism
  4. Open source for development
  5. ICT training and research
  6. Social enterprise incubator and ventures

Past Activities & Accomplishments

Activities change from year to year, but they have included in the past two years of the trip, the following projects:

  • Documentation and visits of local important sites and attractions
    • Kakum Rain Forest
    • Jukwa Palm Oil Plant”
    • Denkyira Kingdom history and Denkyira artifact,
    • Winneba District Assembly
  • Teaching and facilitation of “New Academic Year IT School”
  • Learning African (Ghanaian) Drumming and Culture
  • Set up of several nodes on WODiVNet Wireless Mesh

Building Blocks for Success

Joy drums with kids @ NTHU to support volunteers' fund-raising to serve and learn in oneVillage Ghana

Learning and service begins at home. The learning process, when properly documented and examined, serves as the knowledge template for others to use.

The goals we aim for are basic: providing the best education and food for all children, as our ultimate destination.

Since Dec. 2009, from the application of the Program, formation of the team, creation of team work and design of the tasks, we have identified a few elementary building blocks to establish this process with previous years’ learning while determining to design unique and innovative approaches to Social Innovation:

  1. Unity Drum for Team Building and Outreach
  2. Social Innovator Workshop to learn relevant subjects such as digital archive, fair trade, documentary and citizen journalism.
  3. Networked Improvement Communities or NICs provide the general concept of developing standards and best practices for the effective use of ICT to link people together globally as part of peer-to-peer networks.

Partners and Supporters:

Downloadables and other Online Resources about the Program: