Back to the Root Empowerment Workshop

Vision: Our aim is to embrace the economic significance of the NPO sector, and provide a way to channel more resources into HIV/AIDS related NPOs and CBOs. A website portal will be developed to be the online arm of oneVillage in the war on HIV/AIDS.

Concept: ICT and modern technology must be carefully considered in relation to its social impact. We see the importance of developing experimental centers that allow the experimentation of ICT so that we can further understand how to maximize virtual experiences while also encouraging a vital physical reality. We call these Unity Centers. World urgent issues like HIV/AIDS, poverty and ecological degradation pose an unprecedented challenge to people all over the world most especially in the developing countries. However, if we do not address these issues effectively and with a concerted effort we risk being overwhelmed by them.

This program is designed to facilitate awareness in developing a very humanistic and highly emotional community building focus to address these issues. AIDS will be featured prominently in our work because we feel it is a pressing issue. However the general focus is on how Information and Communication technology can increase youth awareness in relation to the various challenges of our world today through a careful deployment of the most effective technologies. This includes the sharing and development of stories that can be shared with others both through interpersonal communications and the use of mass media tools. We will discuss ideas, insights, knowledge, recommendations, best practices, questions, fears, needs, dreams, goals, desires, predictions, reminders, etc, in the context of a meaningful process of trust building and retribalization incorporating local as well as external indigenous rituals into the workshop process.

Methodology: Workshops can be organized in a variety of ways including national represention of local focus and can also involve specific sectors of the integrated knowledge wheel such as economy ecology and education. We will ‘prime the pump’ for the workshop applying critical thinking, knowledge sharing and storytelling to issues in Digital Development Dynamics, using these steps:

Participants will learn through direct experience how the empowerment process works to help people believe in themselves and to apply critical thinking and knowledge sharing to HIV/AIDS- related local and national development issues.

Participants will also learn how community builders can add information and communication Technology (ICT) to the empowerment process and engage communities in telling stories and sharing them with others- in the village and around the world to collaborate and to build economies.

1.	Introduce the participant to how a community builder can add information and communication Technology (ICT) to the empowerment process and engage communities in telling stories and sharing them with others
2.	Increase awareness in relation to the importance of cultural development in relation to HIV/AIDS relief and other urgent human challenges.
3.	Explain the role of culture in sustainable development such as through encouraging people to balance modern technology with local cultural development.
4.	Demonstrate the effectiveness of ICT in raiing the awareness of the people in the community on about HIV/AIDS
5.	Teach workshoppers how to measure on the effect of the techniques learned at the workshop in terms of the imapct on their lives and others seeing these cultural development techigues as community building tools.

Target groups: The goal of the program is to provide multiple and synergistic benefits to a global alliance of multistakeholder groups through the effective utilization of cultural awareness to harness human pontential. Participants will preferably come from diverse backgrounds including community leaders, donor agencies, corporate/organization of business development, executives, NGOs, Technology providers etc using the World Café model.