GRASSUP NOW - A Strategy of Education for Community Well-being

Project Name: Grassroots Underpinnings: Poverty, Nutrition, ODL/ICTs and Women

Location: 4 Projects in Kenya as part of the COL-Kenya/GRASSUP NOW Consortium.

description: GRASSUP NOW (Grassroots Underpinnings: Poverty, Nutrition, ODL/ICTs and Women consists of four Kenyan based non-profits. Their goal is to promote an educational program that is focused on local empowerment, nutrition and health, open learning and sustainable development.

Background: These groups by working together collaboratively were able to receive a grant proposal for 20,000 Canadian dollars from the Commonwealth of Learning (COL). COL is a Canadian organization that focuses on developing programs that can be augmented with ICT to address the needs of underserved communities. The money was distributed evenly between the four groups and was earmarked for the purchase of computers and other related hardware to create Information Communication Technology (ICT) Education Centers as part of a process to spread the vision and mission of the GRASSUP NOW program.

Vision: Bringing together diverse groups to develop effective solutions for Kenya through ICT.

Mission: To develop materials which can be shared by all members for mutual community benefit. GRASSUP NOW assists underserved communities in Africa by raising money to develop an ICT infrastructure that addresses the socioeconomic roots of dependency thinking.

Concept: GRASSUP NOW will achieve its mission by bridging cultural, tribal, racial, gender and religious barriers to create an open environment for learning. To create an open learning environment, a leadership model needs to emerge that is focused on coordinating knowledge sharing and training towards the empowerment of people, particularly women as it is that many women and minority groups are discouraged from getting an formal education. An important objective of this program is to address social issues that promote the spread of AIDS. Women are empowered to protect themselves from HIV/AIDS by earning their own living. This addresses one of the greatest causes of infection among poor single women - relying on transient, but relatively well-paid men to support them.

Project Design and Rationale: GRASSUP NOW is a collaborative program that seeks to demonstrates how ICT can reduce poverty and encourage sustainable human economic development in Kenya. Still in the concept stage this joint venture was designed to function in a complementary way to COL-Kenya which was formed as a consortium of Kenyan and US NGOs. COL Kenya successfully obtained funding from the Canadian based Commonwealth of Learning Program in 2004 to fund the purchase of computers to promote ICT open and distance learning. One of the goals was also to create GRASSUP NOW is a multi-purpose program that seeks to develop innovative learning and replication tools to build capacity in open and distance learning with a focus on environmental, nutritional, agricultural and health issues.

GRASSSUP NOW seeks to instill a self-help/social enterprise approach that gives people a sense of achievement and validation. This is done by providing local people with the tools and information so that they can develop a sense of what is the best way to build and organize their local economies. Towards this end, this initiative, creates and distributes educational content that serves underserved communities in areas of:

1.	Agriculture, nutrition and health care
2.	Income-generation through business education and e-commerce
3.	Environmental education
4.	Grass-roots empowerment through literacy using ICT to augment existing teaching and communication tools

ICT and organizational initiatives can be the drivers of social transformation ensuring equal participation in civil society government for minority groups and basic welfare and safety net services such as health care education, healthy nutritious food and safe drinking water. This process of collaboration is at its root about learning from the collective wisdom that defines us as a living and evolving human global community. GRASSUP (NOW) is a successful demonstration of how committed people can overcome the challenges of collaboration.

	Identify appropriate and readily available information and communication technology (ICT) and open and distance learning (ODL) methods to support locally-produced educational content creation.
	Integrate the best functionality in ICT and ODL systems and capabilities provided by leading innovators.
	Provide practical ICT solutions for underserved communities
	Support the poverty reduction and sustainable human development goals of the COL-Kenya GRASSUP-NOW initiative

	Francis Anyona of the Ikonzo Musanda Self-Help Group
	James Onyango, Director of KAIPPG
	Kennedy Edwine Onyango, Director of Community Initiatives and Social Support Center Organization (CISSO)
	Kiragu Maina Coordinator of the Interactive Learning Network Ltd (SchoolConnect)
	Janet Feldman of KAIPPG International helped to facilitate the process of bringing together these groups, inviting them into the process of applying for the grant with COL
	Krishna Alluri of COL, has played an important role as an advisor, helping to guide and navigate this collaborative process of developing a grant proposal suitable to COL
	Mark Roest of oneVillage Foundation USA (no longer involved)

Target Groups: People in underserved communities in Kenya with a focus on Women.