Promoting Local Internet Content in Amharic Language: Problem Identification, Analysis and Recommendations
Project organizer: Solomon Atnafu, Global Member
To make developing nations part of the existing global economy, appropriate attention should be given to local content, local applications and indigenous knowledge. Ethiopia is a country of 80 million and has a rich culture as well as several languages. The national working language of the country is Amharic, which uses the Ethiopic script for writing, now supported by UNICODE and used for writing most of the languages spoken in the country. For Ethiopia to benefit from the Internet as a means for the socio-economic development of its people, promoting the use of local content and application on the Internet is necessary and is also a means to increase access. Research that can identify the real causes of the unsatisfactory local Internet content problem and that can provide the appropriate solutions to promote it is needed. The result of this research project will also serve to design appropriate policies and strategies for local content development and to promote Internet usage for socio-economic development of the country.
Computer Training and Internet Access for Students and Teachers of Kigoto and St. Theresa High Schools in Kamwenge District, Uganda
Project organizer: Juliet Ayebazibwe, Global Member
Rural Voluntary Empowerment, a local charity, operates the Kigoto School where this effort will be interwoven with other academic programmes offered at the school. It is primarily intended to provide students, administrators, teachers and support staff with computer and Internet training as well as full term access to the Internet in order to promote modern learning, research, information sharing, and globalization. The project will also benefit students of the neighboring school, St. Theresa Secondary School, a key partner in this project. It has been planned that students of the senior class from St. Theresa will commute from their school on weekends to attend computer training and access the Internet at the Kigoto location. In total, more than 700 individuals will benefit from the activities.
Enabling Effective Internet Access to Caucasian Juhuri Minority for Better Education, Life and Preservation of Cultural Heritage
Project organizer: Ulkar Bayramova, Global Member
The objective of this multi-partner project, lead by the Azerbaijan Chapter (in-formation), is to enable effective access for under-served communities, namely the Juhuri minority living in several remote, dispersed locations in the Caucasus Mountains, mainly in Azerbaijan. Many productive members of this minority emigrated due to economic hardship, forming active clusters of diaspora in Russia, Israel and USA, but weakened the preservation of their local culture. Being of Judaic religion, they have a need to use non-Latin (Hebrew and Cyrillic) scripts. The project, including Internet Society members from Azerbaijan, Poland, Georgia and Israel, hopes to help underprivileged groups through access to the Internet and effective training for their specific educational, cultural and economic needs. The project will organize basic ICT and distance learning courses for school students, youth and adults of one, out of many, minority groups in Azerbaijan in their native language.
Connecting the Community of Lascahobas, Haiti to the Internet
Project organizer: Laura Hosman, Global Member
This project connects multiple schools and an after-school computer-learning center in the town of Lascahobas, Haiti. The multi-partnered team has been working in Haiti for over a year, to bring solar electricity to schools participating in the One Laptop per Child (OLPC) programme. An opportunity has recently presented itself to extend Internet connectivity to Lascahobas, through the Rural Broadband Connectivity Program (RBCP), which is being spearheaded by the non-governmental organization Inveneo and through which local Haitians are being trained and certified to be able to install and maintain the network. Even so, the RBCP has been formed to provide Internet connectivity to NGOs only, and not yet to educational institutions. This programme will improve Internet connectivity for teachers, children, and families and allow them to take full advantage of the technology, and increase the amount of information available to them. Our ultimate goal is to improve the quality of education in Haiti.
Internet Observatory
Project organizer: Tommi Karttaavi, Finland Chapter
By offering a standard Internet Society Chapter-lead portal for all public-policy issues, this project will empower the general user to have a global approach to Internet issues, while at the same time seeking to find solutions more locally adapted. The scope of this project is worldwide by construction, calling upon all the Internet Society chapters as potential contributors, and has an ambitious yet realistic timeline for its implementation - operational already in March 2011. The project is aimed at making it easy to find and compare Internet public policy related information in different countries, increasing transparency and building awareness of globally emerging public policy issues. The specific outcome of the project is the www.InternetObservatory.org portal.
Solar-Powered Internet Kiosk for the Maasai Community in Loita, Kenya
Project organizer: Dylan Mahalingam, Global Member
The location for this effort is at Loita Hills Academy in Loita, Kenya (http://www.loitahillsacademy.com/) a truly remote area in the Maasai land. The Maasai, known for being nomadic (mostly for grazing reasons), have started to settle more in the last few decades so that their children can attend school and create stable community initiatives. Currently, the nearest computers are located in the urban town of Narok, over 135km away from Loita. The Solar-Powered Internet Kiosk is an independent self-contained kiosk featuring three industrial design computer terminals, a manned administrator terminal, and broadband wireless Internet connectivity. The project/research study will be undertaken by four organizations, Lil' MDGs (a non-profit in the US), Under the Acacia (a non-profit in the US working in tandem with communities in Kenya), Voices of Africa for Sustainable Development (an NGO), and Intersat Africa (a private company). The research component includes the creation and implementation of a new training curriculum, as well as baseline and follow-up assessments on the kiosk's impact in the community.
E-Science: Ensuring Gambia Participates Fully in the Growth and Development of the Internet
Project organizer: Gabriel Ndow, Global Member
Recent government statistics show that less than 1% of Gambian high school children who recently took the school leaving examinations had a passing grade of C6 or better in Math and Science (Physics, Chemistry and Biology). This statistic is of major significance to the future growth and development of the Internet in The Gambia. Its growth depends on having a well-trained pool of engineers (in various areas) as well as a science-oriented education community. While there are several factors which have caused this sad state of affairs, a recent UNESCO report stated that one of the major reasons for the high failure rate was due to the very low number of qualified science and math teachers, and inadequate learning resources. This project aims at contributing toward bridging this student performance gap in Math and Science, through a representative target group, with the use of Internet technologies that will be leveraged to provide a platform for expert teaching of science content and be made readily accessible to students and teachers.
Upgrade of the Armenia Academic (Research) Network to IPv6 Readiness
Project organizer: Vladimir Sahakyan, Global Member
Because IPv6 is central to the continued growth and stability of the Internet, the goal of the project is to promote IPv6 deployment by helping to build the required operational capability within the Armenia National Research and Education Network (AM NREN). AM NREN consists of university, educational and academic (research) networks. The latter, named Academic Scientific Research Network of Armenia (ASNET-AM, http://www.asnet.am) is the biggest part of AM NREN and its current services are all implemented over IPv4. With support from the Internet Society Armenia Chapter, this is the first phase of a larger project to upgrade the whole Armenia NREN to IPv6 readiness.
Read the interim project report here
Dili Village Telco, Stage 2
Project organizer: Guilherme Soares, Global Member
In the first year (2010) of the Dili Village Telco Project, 50 nodes were installed in Dili, 10 in Baucau and 10 in Ermera of Timor-Leste; however, several problems had emerged such as interference in some areas and lack of software tools to fix the quality and links between nodes. In this second year, the project will extend the networks by a further 10 nodes in Dili and 40 nodes in Baucau, and strengthen the quality of the links between all 100 nodes by upgrading the antennae reflectors to help address the interference problems in order to achieve a better level of local telephone service and metropolitan IP backbone. The project is a collaboration between FONGTIL, the umbrella organisation for NGOs in the region, and InfoTimor, a local NGO member in Baucau, with mentoring and technical support from Rowetel based in Australia.