Recent Newsletters

February/March 2004

April/May 2004

June/July 2004

August/September
2004

The oneVillage Review
A bi-monthly newsletter highlighting projects and issues relevant to the oneVillage Foundation.

The objective of this newsletter is to promote the development of integrated whole systems solutions towards the mitigation of world urgent issues. A particular focus is on empowering village level economic development in what is termed the bottom-up or bottom of pyramid economy - where 4/5ths of the world population is located.

"The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them..."

-Albert Einstein

Feb/Mar 2005

OVF Updates

1. County Reports

OVF - Nigeria
Olaposi our Nigeria operative has been making progress despite going through a harrowing event in which he was robbed and beaten on the way to a meeting with Fantsuam Foundation officials and representative from Explan Computers in Nigeria. We are happy to say he has recovered and has continued to move forward in his work in promoting our work in Nigeria and has recently been featured in the Nigerian Tribune - a national Nigerian newspaper, promoting OVF, Fantsuam and Explan’s Solo Computer. We have recently engaged with Fantsuam to focus on raising funds for their project community development programs in the Kafanchan region of Nigeria (which I discuss elsewhere in the newsletter). The Solo Computer as some of you ICT buffs may know is a transportable computer that is designed especially for developing countries. Finally to cap it all off Olaposi has entered the competition for the Stanford Digital Fellowship.
More about the Solo Computer.

OVF’s NEW OVF Kenya Leadership Team
We want to welcome OVF-Kenya director Kennedy Odhiambo and we appreciate his charting the way forward for OVF-K with a fresh perspective. Kennedy was selected by a transition team for OVF Kenya that has been put in place by Henry Migingo who was selected chairperson of steering committee by OVF USA after Kennedy Onyango’ resignation. This group also makes up the OVF-K board (steering committee). We appreciate the efforts and leadership of new OVF-K board Chairman Henry Migingo in helping to move OVF-K forward with a transition team. As part of this process, the new team began an evaluation process that eventually led to the selection of Kennedy Odhiambo who is now the new country director and is Secretary/Executive Director (African Centre for Human Advocacy).
More about the new OVF-K Team.

OVF - Ghana
Recently we have engaged in efforts to reschedule the Sports People that Care program in Ghana. OVF Ghana team leader Kafui Prebbie has been meeting with OVF-G partner ProLink to discuss a new date for a match between two of the four leading football teams in Ghana and also to arrange for additional funding to organize the effort between two leading football teams in Ghana. Kafui has recently updated us on his progress in working with the Jukwa Farmers Cooperative to obtain a Palm Oil Press. He says that local government officials have notified him that the first stack of applications have been processed and that our application is on the second stack. Also Kafui recently briefed us on his desire to develop a oneVillage.biz themed project in Jukwa around his family’s existing palm plantation in Jukwa and is now seeking out investment capital. We are working with him to develop a business plan and to seek out investors in the US.

OVF - Tanzania
Titus Tossy of OVF Tanzania is working hard getting the OVF program there up and running. One of his advisors is Tanzania Deputy Minister of Transport and Communications, Dr Daftari. He reports some success in influencing parliamentary leaders in Tanzania on the direction of ICT policy and regulation issues specifically in relation to Tanzania. The focus now is on developing a ICT program that focuses on Women and Girls and to ensuring that it gets proper funding. This will be the centerpeice of the upcoming "World Conference on Harnessing the Potential of ICT for Capacity Building," (more about the conference below). In addition he is now organizing a youth conference that will take place in August as well. We will be publishing the preliminary conference details on our website.

2. Akiwowo Library Update

OVF operative Mark Roest recently spent two weeks in Washington DC with Professor Akiwowo in an effort to help him organize his work. One of the goals is to publish some of Professor's unpublished works and to use any proceeds to fund the development of professor Akiwowo memorial e-library. Akiwowo’s website will feature content from Prof’s musical, religious and academic endeavors. We plan on raising funds for the project through the publishing of several of Professor Akwowo's still unfinished manuscripts. While organizing Professor’s documents they found a treasure trove of manuscripts in various stages of completion, book proposals, essays, music including song anthologies, fascinating video documentary work that is of scholarly and educational importance and charts, illustrations and photographs that can make the writing more accessible to more people.
More about the Akiwowo Publishing and e-Library Project.

oneVillage Foundation called out for Unity Drum to support One World Beat
One World Beat focuses on education for youth affected by HIV/AIDS, extreme poverty, and natural disasters. As part of this global movement towards healing and global unity, Unity Drum Ghana and Unity Drum San Jose came together in anhour of drumming on March 19th-20th, from 5-6pm EST-USA. Drummers played traditional West Africa rhythms to honor the tradition of unity and community love. We dedicated our celebration for the children of the World. We honored the Kone Family of Mali / Burkina Faso for carrying the traditions as West African Griots from Africa to Asia, Europe and the US. The Kone children are gifted with musical talents. The celebration led by Master Drummer Mamadou Kone connected us to the root of his family culture and the heart beat of the children (and many more!) you see in the picture. The drum event also celebrated the birthday of Momadou's daugther Rokia who will turned 4 on the day of Unity Drum! Yusuf Ahmed of Village Culture Kingdom in Ghana organized Unity Drum Ghana an event which featured his particular style of fusion African Fusion. Other participants included those in the USA, Ghana, Burkina Faso, Taiwan, and the Netherlands.

Collaboration and Alliance Building

Mincui Sodas Investigator focuses on development of integrated multipurpose sustainability/ICT EcoCenter in the Canaries
Lucas Gonzalez, a Minciu Sodas investigator of open source technologies, has launched an effort in the Canary Islands to promote the development of sustainable practices and technologies. This will include exploring the possibility to develop an EcoCenter (aka Unity Center) that would openly showcase these practices and technologies, particularly those innovative ones existing in our network such as Dr. Chan’s Integrated Food and Waste Management System and Rick Nelson's SolaRoof building technology. His effort includes the development of a "template" that may be useful to those wanting to replicate this
process of EcoCenter development in other regions. The "template" includes a series of questions that EcoCenter field agent pioneers will probably need to ask as they begin to assemble the necessary network, knowledge, and financial resources they need, in order to develop the centers in their part of the world. He has set up a yahoo group and a blog, both in Spanish, under the theme “imagine Canarias.” If you can’t read Spanish stay tuned OVF is currently working with him to create a wiki page to field agent practices for promoting and developing EcoCenters.
More information about the EcoCenter (wiki website).

What's in a Name: Ecommerce Website verses Ecoliving Solutions Portal?
Aseem Das has developed the WorldCentric’s e-commerce site - an online fair trade and eco store with the goal to support producers in the developing world by giving them fair wages for their products, raise awareness of social/economic and environmental issues, personal choices and how they impact the world and to provide a reliable source for environmental and socially equitably produced products. From his experience with the online World Centric store, he says that it is not just sufficient to have just products for sale, but to have the products within a broader context of relevant information and how they can help affect change for the good in the world.

We see his work in developing an e-commerce site as laying the ground work for a Ecoliving Solutions Portal and have discussed the possibility of working with him on this. A “portal can mean lot of different things to folks,” he says. It is his “understanding that it is a major internet site, which has a recoganizable presence on the internet with high search ranking, with different search engines directing people seeking information on sustainable and equitable living to this site". He notes that there is a site, the FTF (fair trade fed) site that acts like a portal as it lists all the retailers/wholesalers who are doing fair trade. However his vision of a sustainable products/services e-commerce portal would encompass much more than that. It would have information related to sustainable consumerism & choices related to food, energy, transportation, clothing etc., how these choices can impact the environment and social development and in addition a directory listing of socially equitable and environmental products and services. Furthermore the site would give the whole story behind the product; product info; socio-economic information about the people who make it, how they live, how the money from sales of their products will be used and benefit the people. What we are discovering from all this is that selling a product, can also become a means for raising awareness of the country, people, sustainability and the socio-economic conditions, disparities and development.
For more about Fair Trade E-commerce, activism, voluntary simplicity and more go to WorldCentric

Fantsuam Foundation / ZERI / OVF / Global Giving update

We have some new partners we wanted to mention. It is all converging on a focused effort to develop a sustainable agriculture program in Nigeria at Fantsuam Foundation an already existing site that has many features of what refer to as Unity Centers. The Fantsuam Foundation is one example of a project that we are associated with, which is putting the Bottom Up Economy concept into practice in the Kafanchan communities they work out of. The FF microfinance program is focused on women empowerment. The interest from the paying of the loans goes to pay for ICT4D specifically Computers, trainers, satellite connectivity (which is very expensive) and facilities for a Cisco Network Academy and computer school that takes students from all over Africa. There are also budget line items allocated towards AIDS treatment and Prevention. Currently Fantsuam is looking to build its microfinance program by expanding into sustainable agriculture and in the process also addressing urgent nutritional deficits among the people in that region. This includes the development of a fish farming program. We have had a chance to introduce FF to the Zero Emissions Research Initiative (the founder Gunter whom is mentioned above). Dr. George Chan (read his bio here) working with ZERI has developed the Integrated Food and Waste Management System (IF&WMS). We consider this to be a best practice that could potentially address FF’s fishfarming needs. We have begun an effort to put forward a proposal to develop a proof of concept of this system in one of the communities that FF provides services in the Kafanchan region of Nigeria. As part of this effort to get the word out we participated in the Global Giving Innovation Marketplace Contest. This involved filling out a form and sending an email to about 250 individuals and various discussion groups in our network notifying them of the contest. While we did not qualify for the next round of competition, Joy was able to meet with the Global Giving Team and discuss how the program could be improved and how might be able to work with them on this.
More about the Fantsuam Sustainable Community Project.

OVF's March East Coast Trip
Recently Jeff and Joy put their field agent hats on and went to New York and Washington DC. While in NYC, we participated in the Launch of UNESCO’s Decade of Education in Sustainable Development (DESD) at the UN building on March 1. We were invited by Gunter Pauli of Zero Emissions Research Initiative www.zeri.org who was one of the panelists at the launch of the program. We had a chance to meet many people there included Pamela Peeters who is CEO of Pamela Peeters Productions, who it turns out grew up in the same village as Gunter. We also dialogued with several other people including Steven Rockerfeller of the Rockerfellers brother fund and Kofi Annon's wife. We met with Professor Olu Ogunnika a sociologist from Nigeria. Professor Ogunnika accompanied us on a trip to Washinton to meet with Professor Akiwowo who he is a past acquaintance and student of. While in DC, we discused organizational issues and Professor Ogunnika offered his expertise on organization development and structure suggesting that OVF come up with a charter. At the Board meeting Joy also nominated Professor Ogunnika and he accepted becoming the fourth member of OVF's board. Joy had a chance to meet with several people including the executive staff of WorldSpace, Michael Trucarno of InfoDev, the Global Giving team and a group of staffers at USAID While back in NY Jeff had a chance to meet again with Pamela and they explored how we might be able to work together to further develop and implement innovative educational approaches to sustainable development. Within the sustainability field, Pamela is focusing on two main topics: the branding of New Sustainable Media and Women’s Empowerment.
See more about the trip on our blog

Youth Around the World Hold Global Day of Action to End AIDS
On February 26, 2005, youth around the world joined in action against the global HIV/AIDS pandemic. Global Justice, a US-based grassroots student-activist organization has worked with the Global Youth Coalition on HIV/AIDS (GYCA) to give the day—Youth AIDS Day--global reach. "With 8,000 people dying every day of AIDS and 15,000 becoming newly infected with HIV, the only hope we have for defeating the pandemic is to join together globally," explained Healy Thompson, coordinator of Global Justice's Student Global AIDS Campaign. "Youth are at the center of the disease and we will be at the forefront of combating it." It is time that youth take action to demand an increase in youth-friendly HIV/AIDS information and services, and that we work side-by-side with adults to make sure these demands are met," GYCA co-founder Joya Banerjee says More than half of the 5 million people worldwide infected each year by HIV are youth aged 24 and younger.
1. New infections occur disproportionately among young women
2. youth lack the information, education, and services necessary to protect themselves from infection.
3. Vast majority of people living with HIV/AIDS, including young people, do not have access to life-saving treatment and care.

Events ranged from mass marches to HIV/AIDS testing and counseling, and from letter writing campaigns to awareness seminars. Youth AIDS Day marks the launch of a global movement of youth committed to seeing an end to AIDS and committed to being at the forefront of making that happen. "Youth AIDS day is an opportunity for youth around the globe to unite in solidarity against a disease which deeply affects us all," said the Global Youth Coalition on AIDS Canadian coordinator, David Suk. Youth AIDS Day is the first major joint campaign that GYCA has coordinated, and is giving the this movement unprecedented momentum.

Little lambs Update
The ground breaking ceremonies of the Hope Kenya/ANFORD/Little Lambs project created some excitement and hope about the future. This was made possible by a contribution from Stave Garrett and Ingrid Kloet of Planet Poz New Mexico. The facility is designed address the impact that AIDS is having on youth. Construction will include three classrooms for the youth and for caregivers who also need education and counselling. Josephine says the ground-breaking was a miracle. The pastor in charge walked through the four corners with a hoe and broke the ground. Local government officials were and the little lambs sang. They whole thing says Josephine "was to try to bring to people the picture of reaching and involving every grpup in our community to try to fight aids. That each person at any level and background has a part to play in fighting AIDS."

Ecology and Sustainability

Sustainable Village Touts Low Cost Appropriate Technology Solutions for Emerging Markets Steve Troy founder of Sustainable Village, recently updated us on his working in developing low cost housing solutions for emerging markets. Steve is the founder and former owner of Jade Mountain a sustainable products mail-order ecommerce company that recently bought up by Gaiam. He also organizes one of the largest sustainability conferences in the US. He says he is working with some people now who used micro-banking to complete a project with Nelson Mandela in South Africa to build 11,000 homes for $5M - about $455 each. Their partner, IDE is working on a design to build $150 ones.

Steve also reports that a class at Stanford is working with sustainable village to develop a "Topless Greenhouse." This technology is designed to foster optimal growing temperatures while increasing carbon dioxide concentration surrounding plants at the lowest possible cost. Here the primary function of the greenhouse is to provide plants with additional carbon dioxide. It does this by surrounding the crops with plastic film kept in place with bamboo stakes, which is combined with farming on permanent raised beds. The top of the structure is left open. Carbon dioxide, being heavier than other molecules in the atmosphere, does not escape through the opening where the roof should be but instead accumulates near the ground. The concentration is higher than would otherwise be the case, resulting in crop yields that are as much double conventional farming methods. While the per acre cost a conventional greenhouse is approximately US $ 20,000-35,000 the Sustainable Village/Stanford green house costs just a tenth of this (approximately US $ 1500-2500).

oneVillage Networked Meetings and Conferences

Unity Drum Oakland

The Unity Drum experience continues with Unity Drum Oakland, on Saturday the 2nd of April. Through the wayof the drum, one can experience happiness and peace. Drumming evokes the true essence of love and brings families and communities together. Explore the ancient wisdom of the twin realities of rhythm and sound and heal broken hearts. Master drummer Kokomon Clottey from Ghana West Africa, will be performing. He is author of Mindful Drumming: Ancient Healing for Unleashing The Human Spirit and Building Community of indigenous African drumming.

Exploratory Meeting on Starting a Club of Rome Chapter for the Bay Area/Silicon Valley
On Friday at 6pm, April 22nd at the Science and Technology Division Taipei (of Taiwan) Economic and Cultural Office, the oneVillage Foundation, Living Directory and Equal Access in conjunction with Club of Rome (and CoR BCH) invites you to a special meeting exploring the establishment of a Club of Rome Chapter in the Bay Area. We hope that you will consider joining us in this event, which will include a chance to socialize, listen to presentations, and then participate in a forum discussing the rationale for establishing a CoR chapter in the Bay Area. This meeting will feature a presentation by Dr. Raoul Weiler, president and co-founder, of the Club of Rome Brussels-EU Chapter. He will give an overview of CoR’s history and work as well as his experiences in developing the CoR-EU Chapter in Brussels. We will also explore how his effort in Brussels to create a CoR chapter there could be replicated something similar in the Bay Area.
More about the proposed Bay Area Club of Rome

OVF to Coordinate Event Focusing on Women and Youth at an Upcoming UNESCO/Club of Rome Sponsored World Conference
On May 11-13 in Paris, the Club of Rome and UNESCO will present a "World Conference on Harnessing the Potential of ICT for Capacity Building." We are in coordination with the organizers of the Digital World Conference, mainly Raoul Weiler President of the Brussels-EU Chapter of the Club of Rome who is the lead organizer. The World Conference seeks to bring NGOs and vendors together to develop a plan to organize effective ICT solutions to address the digital divide and eventually eradicate world poverty. This is a follow up to the WSIS 2003 and as perquisite to the WSIS 2005 conference in Tunis. The conference has a focus on satellite and wireless solutions and specifically explores how they can be used to address needs ot marginalized regions. Included, in this will be a series of regional video-conferences broadcasted via Global Development Learning Network hubs. The GLDN is a World Bank funded group that has facilities all over the world. The entire Conference will be web-casted live and some parts broadcasted via satellite to the other GDLN hubs.

OVF is now organizing the event in Tanzania with a focus on women and youth, and sustainable social enterprise solutions. We will be covering a series of topics revolving around these two core themes including the refugee crisis, best practices and ways to effectively ensure that the grassroots voice is strongly heard as that is key to the success of the Bottom Up Economy reforms of existing development practices. Youth activists in the OneVillage Foundation network will be able to engage international leaders involved in ICT4D policymaking. The focus at the Tanzanian event will be grassroots efforts to enable ICT and HIV/AIDS education for women and youth in Tanzania. There will also be brief presentations of each hub’s area of focus: Ghana - ICT for youth and agriculture; and Kenya - peace building efforts among the Sudanese refugees.
More information is located on the UNESCO website and also our website.

About us:

The one Village Foundation seeks to assist people in Africa in overcoming the AIDS pandemic by addressing immediate needs through capacity building efforts, while also providing a proactive and whole systems platform to promote sustainable development in Afric 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.
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4. volunteer!

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