|
| In
this Newsletter: |
1.
[1village] Yahoo Group
2. New Board Members Selected for OVF
3. Joy Tang director of 'San Jose Ojishe House' Entertains
Guests from Around the world in September
4.Promoting Bottom Up Economics
5. A Day on the Farm
6. Internet Bookmobile Project in Ghana
7. Networked Improvement Communities
8. Tamera EcoVillage in Portugal
9. Open Content Movement
10. Collaboration with
Tamera EcoVillage in Portugal
11. AIDS 2004 Conference Special
Report
12. Take Action Against Environmental and Social Degradation
13. Learning from Prem Kumar's Success 14.
Concentrating Solar Technologies
15. Eradicating Poverty through Profit Conference
16. Global Learn Day Activities |
OVF
Updates
1. Open invitation to Join [1village] Yahoo Group
If you are interested in any of the topics discussed
here, please do sign up the [1village] yahoo group. Please
note that [1village] yahoo group is an open forum with a purpose:
Planning for sustainable future, integrating health, education,
community, shared stories, economic opportunity, and much
more, brought about by appropriate use of computers in villages
in accordance with UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan's ICT4D
(Information and Communication Technology for Development)
program. What's inspiring us to do what we do is a vision
of a sustainable future that we believe can be realized through
the power of our thinking and our courage and perseverance
to make it a practical part of our everyday lives. Learning
doesn't end when you get out of college it continues for a
life time. It has been a process of self-learning and mutual-teaching
with the many people who have converged in our lives to make
oneVillage what it is today. We thank you all! Go here
to join the 1Village Yahoo Group.
2. New Board Members Selected for OVF
On August 20th oneVillage Foundation Board Chair Joy Tang
selected two new board members to replace vacancies in the
three person board. New board members include Erich Kohler
of Switzerland and Professor Akinsola Akiwowo of Alexander,
Virginia. Meetings are quarterly and the next meeting was
scheduled for October 30th but has been postponed as one of
the board members Professor Akiwowo had an accident and will
be recovering. The appointment of corporate officers will
be discussed at that meeting.
3. Joy Tang director of 'San Jose Ojishe House' Entertains
Guests from Around the world in September
Joy has long taken pride in the hospitality she offers
to others in need of a place to stay. One the things that
she still holds dear from her travels to Nigeria is the Yoruba
concept of Ojishe. The idea of Ojishe House is to make visitors/friends
feel at home in a space of togetherness, trust and love. During
September she extended her home to Ilya Eric Lee of Taiwan's
prestigious Academia Sinca and then Dr. Raoul Weiler who is
president of the Brussels's chapter of the Club of Rome.
Joy first met Eric when he was only 12 years old. He was
a student when Joy taught English classes in Taipei. Eric
recently did an internet search on Joy and then emailed her.
He had a chance to meet again for the first time in 20 years
in Taiwan earlier this year. He then was able to get some
time to make a visit here to the Bay area on business relating
to his work at Academy Sinica, a Taiwanese government funded
research institute. He has been involved in Academia
Sinica's Open Source Foundry, which serves to bring
together the Far East open source community to better develop
and integrate open source technologies. Eric Lee is now organizing
the ICOS Open Source Conference in Taiwan for December. Part
of his visit involved exploring the possibility of promoting
the World Vista health care informatics system in Taiwan,
a system which we see as having great potential to deliver
health care solutions in non-affluent nations as well, particularly
in relation to addressing the AIDS pandemic.
We first met Dr. Raoul Weiler in the spring. He has since
traveled to the Bay Area to promote his upcoming conference
for the Digital World Conference in May of next year. His
most recent trip, in which he stayed at Joy's house, involved
the discussion of what role OVF would play in organizing the
conference. OVF is one of the networked NGOs that he is working
with to prepare for this conference. We briefed him on our
work and how we seek to promote village level economic development
as an alternative to current approaches which focus on urban
areas. We agreed to work on a paper titled tentatively Village
Economy which will explain in detail our work that would be
posted on the Digital World website and to discus further
how our approach might be discussed at the conference. Dr.
Weiler has also offered his support to be on our International
Advisory Board. Please take a look of his bio.
Read more
about the story of Ojishe.
4. Promoting Bottom Up Economics the Living Directory
Way
Because of our common interests in promoting the
upcoming Digital
World Conference (a focus of which will be the Village
Economy theme mentioned in the above paragraph) in May 2005,
Sergio Lub of Living Directory has generously offered us his
directory's services. We plan to develop an online Affinity
Group within the Living Directory in preparation for the World
Resources Institute’s Eradicating Poverty Conference
(more about conference below in the newsletter). The Living
Directory is an online directory for many progressive
groups. It is one example of how innovative social networking
tools are empowering people to better serve each other and
humanity. Our strategy is to use the virtual part of the conference,
which will take place in a series of pre-conference events
and online discussions to communicate and promote the oneVillage
“Village Economy” concept to
conference participants. We see this as a way to connect the
grassroots with important decision-makers who are often cut
off from the everyday challenges of the people they are seeking
to serve (those who actually live in the bottom up economy).
If you are interested in assisting us in this process send
an email to [email protected].
We’ll keep you posted on our progress.
5. A Day on "The Farm" (UCSC's Agro-Ecology
Center): Promoting Sustainability in Education
Farmers not only in the US but all over the world
want to go organic and they need help (training and labor).
Our recent field trip to the UC
Santa Cruz Agro-Ecology Center helped us to see the achievements,
the shortcomings and the potentials of this innovative project.
While we visited the Farm, we were given a tour by Joy Mismo
who is from South Africa. She told us that she will be one
of last who will be able to participate in UCSC's organic
farming program scholarship for Africans, because it is being
discontinued for lack of funds. That could be a loss to many
young Africans who have a desire to learn about sustainable
agriculture and apply that knowledge towards building a sustainable
and prosperous Africa. Organic gardening and lessons on permaculture
have recently been introduced to over 12,000 schools in South
Africa. According to South African Education Minister Naledi
Pandor, "Learners have become familiar with permaculture,
an organic system of farming and gardening that combines people
and plants in a way that produces more energy than it uses.
In addition, many schools now use their projects to implement
active learning. They grow their own food, harvest, conserve
and manage water, recycle waste, generate income for the school,
run outreach projects and much more." For more information
go to the Organic Consumers article.
To build on the progress that has been made both here and
in places like South Africa in relation to sustainability
education programs, we propose a fellowship and cultural exchange
program that will train people from non-affluent nations in
the US through the development of a prototype sustainable
design and development center. This (Unity) center will focus
on a comprehensive education in all areas of sustainable development.
People will learn as they participate and immerse themselves
in the building and design process of creating sustainable
environments. Africans and others will go to the US to learn
about cutting edge approaches to sustainability, while Americans
will go to Africa to assist in the process of building centers
to promote sustainable and integrated ICT solutions in rural
Africa as well as learn about African culture, customs and
way of life.
Here
are some photos of the Field Trip and a blog
entry on the field trip.
6. Anywhere Books and the Internet Bookmobile Project
in Ghana
In 2003, Richard Koman and Brad deGraf founded Anywhere
Books, a spin-off of the Internet Archive.
They received a grant from the World Bank's InfoDev group,
partnering with the National Library of Uganda to create the
Uganda Digital Bookmobile. The project includes scanning stations
and a printing system at the National Library in Kampala.
The Bookmobile itself focuses on a relatively small geographic
area about an hour from Kampala. OVF has been working with
Anywhere Books to expand their bookmobile programs into Ghana.
We are looking at how we can integrate the bookmobile with
our Catch IT Young Program, which has reached out to various
school districts with the support of community members, teachers,
IT professionals and civil governments and the students and
teachers. They are eager to learn, but they scarcely have
the resources to do so. Joy in her most recent trip to Ghana
(April 2004), attended a “Holistic ICT for community
development” forum at the University of Education, Winneba,
Ghana, where she emphasized the co-development of learning
and teaching programs from the US and the local communities.
CatchITYoung
has been embraced by the Ministry of Communication in Ghana.
For more about Anywhere Books go here.
Joy Tang and Richard Koman were recently Interviewed by Wired
Magazine about Anywhere Books. Katie Dean of Wired
Magazine interviewed Joy Tang on September 14th. Joy identified
how ICT tools (in this case the bookmobile) can be used towards
human capacity building and network readiness. Art and science
collaboration is one way in which we have demonstrated how
youth leadership can be used creatively to inspire a flourishing
youth movement in Africa. The Anywhere Books Bookmobile is
an access point to knowledge in further empowering the youth
there. Our vision and dream is to work with Anywhere Books
to develop this program in Ghana and eventually to other parts
of Africa.
For more read the Article.
Collaboration
and Alliance Building
7. Doug Engelbart and Networked Improvement Communities
(Silicon Valley NIC)
On the USA front, OVF has sought to cultivate and build relationships
to create a Silicon Valley network that is more conscious
of how to use information and communications technologies
(ICT) to improve the state of humanity. The oneVillage Foundation
has invested several years of work and research into effective
approaches and processes to address world urgent issues. From
this we have developed a large body of information and associated
networks. We believe that if properly mobilized and accessed
that knowledge base has powerful relevance in developing a
concrete process of realizing a "global sustainability
network" that can be rapidly replicated and linked to
other similar efforts throughout the world. There are many
who believe that the rapid replication of sustainable technologies
is vital not only to the continuation of civilization but
to humanity itself. Our focus is on developing "living
laboratories" where we can test out the validity and
feasibility of this integrated approach we have been working
on in relation to promoting practical approaches to "ecoliving."
Related to this effort at developing an effective interdisciplinary
approach to promote whole systems thinking, has been a series
of meetings that we have participated in as part of an attempt
to develop a Silicon Valley Networked Improvement
Community or NIC.
At a post-conference meeting at the venue of the Hypertext
Conference 2004 (UC Santa Cruz), we had a chance to meet up
with some leading programmers involved in the Hypertext Movement.
They are working with Doug Engelbart (a Silicon Valley inventor
who was a key force in developing computer interface technologies
that most of us now take for granted like the mouse for more
about his work and vision see
the wired article by Ken Jordan) to develop the hypertext
idea. His organization The Bootstrap
Alliance has developed an augmentation model that not
only improves the way information is exchanged but also facilitates
the development of social networks that effectively use that
information to increase collective IQ.
What emerged from these meetings was the realization that
augmented networks or NICs are not only about technology or
theoretical approaches, but also about people coming together
to discover themselves exploring the obstacles that keep them
from collaborating towards effective collective action. Before
any group can come together to co-create effective holistic
solutions to the world’s problems, the group must first
empower its members and create a culture of trust where people
feel productive working together as a team. Many of the most
talented innovators in Silicon Valley have gone unrecognized,
because they have not been part of process that teaches them
how to effectively work together in non-hierarchal groups.
The challenge is to link grassroots technologists and “cultural
creatives” together to co-create effective holistic
solutions to the world’s problems, weaving together
an infrastructure that enables people to more fully realize
their potential or collective IQ, as Dr. Engelbart refers
to it
For more about NICs and augmented human development see our
"NIC ecoliving module"
here.
8. The Hewlett Foundation, MIT and (Semi) Open Content
We were recently introduced to the idea of Open Content.
The Wikipedia site
describes Open Content as "any kind of creative work
including articles, pictures, audio, and video that is published
in a format that explicitly allows the copying of the information.
Content can be either in the public domain or under a license
like the GNU Free Documentation License. "Open content"
is also sometimes used to describe content that can be modified
by anyone; there is no closed group like a commercial encyclopedia
publisher responsible for all the editing." Joy Tang
joined Anil Srivastava of AcrossWorld Technologies, Rob Stephenson
of OpenCourse.org and Kathy Long in attending the African
Virtual University-World Bank-Hewlett Foundation video conference
on Aug. 25th in which the possibilities of open content were
discussed. The Hewlett foundation has been doing some interesting
work. They provided funding to the tune of $50 million, enabling
MIT
to "open source" its educational curriculum by way
of the internet. However, according to Wikipedia site, this
cannot be considered open content, because the "copyrights
remain with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology or members
of its faculty." Regardless, the open content movement
is promoting ways to enable people to access free and open
sources information. The African Virtual University
(AVU) is adopting the open content movement method
to increase information access for Africans. We are exploring
the possibility of incorporating Open Content into our sustainable
design and development education curriculum. We look forward
to your feedback relating to the development of this interdisciplinary
program. The preliminary steps include looking at how we could
enable a content collection from both the university and community
levels. This would be the key area that the parties (WB, Industry,
Foundation and NGOs) would have to carefully design to make
any such program a real alternative to existing top-down educational
systems.
See more about the conference at the OpenCourse.org website.
9. Collaboration with Tamera EcoVillage in Portugal
The Tamara ecovillage is located in Portugal. Their
“healing biotopes” project resonates
with our goal to "Strengthen communities to support the
healing of people" and to "build social immune systems."
Many of the people at Tamara have been living in intentional
communities for 30 years or more, so we respect that wisdom
and hope to share in the process of spreading it out to the
world. Libby Hubbard recently traveled to Tamara and she presented
a letter from Jeff Buderer on behalf of the oneVillage Foundation
and addressed to the Tamara community. The people of Tamara
responded requesting a link exchange and they have added a
link to our site which we have reciprocated by adding their
site to our resources page.
For more about the Healing Biotope Project go here.
10. AIDS 2004 Conference Special Report
Dabesaki Mac-Ikemenjima of Students Without Borders and Ingrid
Kloet of Planet Poz New Mexico were both participants in the
AIDS2004 Yahoo Group. The AIDS2004 Yahoo Group was actually
part of pre conference preparations for the XV International
Conference on AIDS held in Bangkok, Thailand between July
11-16. In addition, Dabesaki participated in the Bangkok Youth
Force and the Bangkok Youth Groups, which were the major international
groupings working to ensure the effective participation of
youth at the conference and to promote youth issues and visibility.
These groups feel that the needs of the youth in are not being
addressed in the AIDS relief community. A major goal is to
increase the level of participation among the youth at the
AIDS conferences and through organizations involved in AIDS
related work such as UNAIDS.
Dabesaki reports several breakthroughs including a dinner
with leaders responsible for coming up with solution to the
AIDS crisis. He spoke at the dinner on behalf of the emerging
Global Youth HIV/AIDS Coalition in which he discussed how
to increase participation of the youth and to ensure their
concerns were being heard. Those attending included: Dr. Peter
Piot, UNAIDS Executive Director, Senator Mechai Viravaidya,
Community Programme Co-chair, Don De Gagne, Community Programme
Co-Chair, Zackie of Treatment Access Campaign, Alice W., Chair
of ICW, Richard, Executive Director, ICASO and a few others
from the office of the UN Secretary General, UNAIDS and the
Thai Government. He also facilitated a workshop session on
"The Role of Youth in the third decade of HIV/AIDS. Dabesaki
was part of the work group that developed the framework for
the Global Youth Network and also spoke at the Youth Press
conference held during the day before the closing ceremony.
Dabesaki's report
contains an overview of the entire participation of youth
at the conference, while Ingrid's report
is more of a first-hand account.
The Global Youth AIDS Coalition is forming
on the momentum of the AIDS 2004 Conference. The Global Youth
AIDS Coalition is seeking input and support from young leaders
in the fight against HIV/AIDS worldwide. They are currently
embarking in a discussion with any youth and/or adult allies
interested in contributing to the formation of a Global Youth
AIDS Coalition. This coalition was proposed by youth worldwide,
including the youth attendees of the XV International AIDS
Conference in Bangkok and XIV International AIDS Conference
in Barcelona. Goals:
1. Identify the needs of youth
2. Set forth goals and objectives
3. Brainstorm on funding and organizational issues
4. Create working groups with thematic focuses
5. Identify key leaders and their skills
Help participate in the e-consultation. Full details about
the coalition can be found here.
Ecology
and Sustainability
11. The Time is Now to Take Action Against
Environmental and Social Degradation
Recently the
Threshold Foundation put out the word that it was seeking
innovative ideas on how to raise awareness of the "extinction
crisis" and was offering a $50,000 grant to develop this
idea into an effective process of of braking what they refer
to the taboo about discussing species extinction in American
society. We along with others in our network including Janet
Feldman, Franz Nahrada and Andrius Kulikauskas, recently submitted
a Letter of Inquiry to Threshold in relation to the grant.
Species extinction through is only the tip of the iceberg.
The health of the planet is declining at a rapid rate due
to our increasing consumption of natural resources according
to World Wildlife Fund’s (WWF)
Living Planet Report 2004. Humans are now consuming 20
percent more natural resources than the Earth can produce.
As a result, other species are being crowded out of existence.
"We are spending nature's capital faster than it can
regenerate," said Dr. Claude Martin, director general
of WWF International. "We are running up an ecological
debt which we won't be able to pay off unless governments
restore the balance between our consumption of natural resources
and the Earth's ability to renew them." What emerged
among us is the realization that the unprecedented human induced
extinction of species is happening parallel to the extinction
of indigenous cultures all over the world. One part of the
solution that we proposed in a letter of inquiry to the Threshold
Foundation is to develop a workshop, outreach and community
building program that teaches people how to build local economies
that are sustainable and address local needs rather than external
ones.
Go here
to find out more.
12. Seeking out Best Practices: Learning
from Prem Kumar's Success in Empowering Villages in India
We welcome Chris Macrae into our network! On the
oneVillage Discussion group Chris has made us aware of Prem
Kumar who has spent the last 25 years building up a 20 person
organization (plus a wider field force) that serves 150000
people across 150 villages. Chris says, “Its one of
the most interesting models of grassroots organization that
I have encountered…” He notes Prem’s ability
to unite cultures, a key prerequisite to any truly authentic
community development model succeeding. Chris is starting
a blog “both on what areas Prem would be happy to be
seen as a benchmark example of and what his region wants to
develop next.”
For more about Prem and other best practices see Chris' Blog.
13. Concentrating Solar Technologies
show Promise as an Emerging Renewable Energy Technology for
Socially Conscious Investors as well as a Catalyst for Village
Level Development
Recently we came across several technologies we feel are compelling
and relate to the development of self-reliant Community
Development Centers (CDCs or Unity Centers) in underserved
communities. First was a revisit of
Stirling Energy Systems (SES) technology and the news
that they are seeking investors for a large scale 1000 megawatt
(MW) power generation project (enough electricity to power
a small city) - in what would be if it was completed, the
largest solar plant in the world. SES is a development stage
energy company that is one of the pioneers of concentrating
solar energy systems. Their technology uses mirrors to reflect
the sun's energy to a central point in the solar array. This
point as you would imagine gets very hot, enough to melt some
metals. However SES uses its solar dish systems to power what
is called an external combustion (Stirling) engine, which
unlike the internal combustion engines that power cars and
trucks relies on external heat to move the pistons and provide
physical motion that can produce electricity or heat. They
claim that once these systems are being mass produced that
they can deliver power that is significantly cheaper than
existing solar PV technologies.
Concentrated solar also came up in our email discussion
with the Tamera Community. Kate Bunney is one of the people
at Tamera involved with the development of the Solar
Power Village. She is a fundraiser for the Institute that
sustains Tamera and specifically for their Middle
East Peace Village Project. The Solar Power Village
is not conceived as a stand alone system, but as an integral
part of a durable and effective social living model. The Solar
Power Village is being developed in co-operation with the
inventor Jurgen Kleinwachter of Bomin Solar Research GMBH.
It consists of an set of solar collectors that collect solar
radiation and then focus it on a tank that contains oil. As
the oil heats up, it causes a Stirling engine to move. The
Stirling provides motion that can be used as a power source
in a community to mill grain, pump water or produce electricity
or heat. Tamera will be the site where this design will be
first implemented - after its test period. Kate adds that
�we believe it would have highly positive effects for hot
climate 'majority countries'." In the coming months we
will be exploring this technology and what prospects it has
towards improving the viability of renewable and sustainable
technologies for the grassroots in both affluent and non-affluent
societies. We'll keep your posted.
Read
more about Solar Power Village and Concentrated Solar.
oneVillage
Networked Meetings and Conferences
14. Eradicating Poverty through Profit
Conference and Virtual Pre-conference Events
The World Resource Institute is organizing the Eradicating
Poverty through Profit conference, an event that addresses
social enterprises, bottom up economy - "doing good and
doing well." Several prominent publications have recently
explored the idea of the Bottom Up economy including Wired,
BusinessWeek, The Economist and The Financial Times. Go here
for more.
The WRI Conference preliminary program is here,
complete with newly confirmed speakers and topics. In preparation
for the December 12-14 conference in SF, there will be a series
of virtual conference events. The first virtual conference
began on the 25th of October and there are online meetings
scheduled for the 8th and 15th of this month. The virtual
conference will be highly moderated and make possible the
participation of NGOs, community groups, entrepreneurs and
small/medium-sized enterprises, and university experts from
developing countries. To participate you need to become a
member of the online communities of Skoll Foundation's Social
Edge and Global Knowledge for Development. Check here
for details.
15. Global Learn Day Activities, November 21st
Janet Feldman director of KAIPPG
International says she is "helping to coordinate
the Africa region, and one big theme this year will be the
use of radio in Africa to address a variety of themes, like
nutrition, HIV/AIDS, and environmental education. The use
of ICTs, youth and women, a focus on health and education,
the arts, all of these are important and would make for great
topics of discussion!"
In years past, there were a lot of project presentations,
and a focus on the Internet so people (who were tuning in
via website) could see websites and visuals while the person
spoke about their work. There has also been the option of
calling in by phone--which is great in terms of dialoguing
with colleagues but expensive--and now there is an option
of free download of a program which makes chatting via the
Internet easier, and free. The organizers (Janet and creator
John Hibbs) would like to see more "roundtable"
discussion, by which they mean less "show" in some
cases and more "tell"! Discussions with colleagues
about issues, projects, challenges are encouraged!
Here are the speakers scheduled so far:
- Sylvie Siyam on the use of radio for rural
women
- Francis Anyona will discuss two ICTs-related
projects a group of us are working on with the Commonwealth
of Learning (as well as his own work with Ikonzo Musanda
Self-Help Group in W. Kenya)
- Neema Mgana, co-founder and director of
ARYI (African Regional Youth Initiative) will talk about
their extensive work with youth
- Jennifer Staple of Unite for Sight has
indicated that a volunteer might be able to speak about
their eye-health programs in Africa
- Ed Cherlin of oneVillage Foundation, "the
Simputer Evangelist", will speak about open-source
issues, the Simputer, and related issues (perhaps a Star
Trek story or two, haha?!)
- Rick Nelson of SolaRoof will speak about
that project and sustainable development
- Victor Odongo of St. Anne's Home in W.
Kenya will talk about their work (helping orphans) and perhaps
some of his creative work (music, films)
- August Kowero, the National ICTs Coordinator
in Tanzania, will speak about the Tanzanian program.
If you are interested in joining please let John ([email protected])
or Janet Feldman know ([email protected]
). For more about the conference go here.
About
us:
The one Village Foundation seeks to assist people
in Africa in overcoming the AIDS pandemic by addressing immediate
needs such as in the construction of treatment centers and
orphanages, while also providing a proactive and whole systems
platform to promote sustainable development in Africa…and
beyond. We seek to promote social enterprise solutions that
integrate ICT, with sustainable development in both developing
and developed regions of the world. We are dedicated to increasing
collaboration and access to ICT in under-served communities
all over the world as part of a process of building local
problem-solving capabilities, and increasing the level of
economic opportunity for all who share our commitment to socially
conscious and sustainable economic development.
What
you can do:
We have totally committed ourselves to bring
this vision to life, so it can be shared. Now we ask for your
support. We invite you to join us in building the infrastructure
needed to create Unity
Center prototypes in Ghana, Nigeria, Kenya, and South
Africa. Your contribution in any of the following areas will
enable us to create social enterprises that are strong enough
to overcome inertia and doubt, and to demonstrate the capacity
of empowered youth at a level that cannot be ignored. oneVillage
Foundation has several projects
in development. The core goal is to support the development
of Unity Centers in Africa as well as one coordinating and
training center here in the US as part of a process to promote
an integrated and whole systems approach to sustainable development.
We invite you to consider both our overall approach and these
specific projects, and to join us in addressing the world’s
most urgent issues:
1. Make a donation
to the oneVillage Foundation.
2. Send us comments, news or relevant events.
3. Subscribe to this monthly newsletter by sending an email
to: [email protected]
and write subscribe in the subject line.
4. volunteer!
Write, email or call us at the oneVillage Foundation:
102 Ballatore Court
San Jose CA 95134
Voice: 408.435.0775
Fax: 408-351-8887
[email protected]
http://www.onevillagefoundation.org
http://www.onevillage.biz
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