initiatives

15.12.2005 n the heart of sub-Saharan Africa's most-crowded metropolis, in a dimly lit Internet café thumping with Nigerian music, clusters of two and three teenage boys hover around aging computer screens. They use their Nike T-shirts and baggy jeans to wipe sweat off their brows and palms as they intently craft deceptive e-mails and scour the Web for foreign e-mail addresses.

17.11.2005 A Workshop on "ICT and Persons with Disabilities", the first of three events organised by UNESCO at the Tunis meeting of the World Summit on the Information Society, is taking place today.

17.11.2005 Hewlett Foundation Announces $900K Grant to African Virtual University for Teacher Training Program and the Teacher Education in Sub-Saharan Africa (TESSA) initiative.

16.11.2005 World leaders, technology leaders and campaigners are in Tunisia for a UN summit intended to help poorer nations benefit from the digital revolution.

27.10.2005 OneWorld South Asia will host a panel discussion with Global Knowledge Partnership on local content in the upcoming Tunis Summit. The panel discussion “Local content: an answer to global problems” provides a knowledge-sharing platform for experts from the South to provide issues around using local content for poverty reduction.

13.10.2005 Encouragement for the use of free and open source software and open standards for science and technology has quietly worked its way into the draft texts being prepared for the November second phase of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS).

10.10.2005 A debate on the emerging agenda for WSIS was staged at ITU, Geneva on 30 September 2005. The debate will be broadcast on BBC World Television on 22 and 23 October 2005.

29.09.2005 Most ICT initiatives till date have been in the form of pilot projects that have worked well in a small community. To upscale this to the national level would need not only excellent planning, but also support from a wide range of players. OneWorld South Asia organized a Panel Discussion "From Pilot Syndrome to Up scaling ICT initiatives - the Grassroots Perspective" at PrepCom 3 on 28th September in this context. Reports Bidisha Pillai, Digital Opportunity Channel Manager, from Geneva.

28.09.2005 OneWorld South Asia on behalf of the Grassroots Caucus organised a side event “Missing Grassroots Voices” at PrepCom 3 on September 27th. Grassroots voices have always been missing from policy-making fora. The event started with a film screening on grassroots people sharing their development concerns and how ICTs could offer possible solutions to them. This was followed by a presentation by Basudev Dhungana, a grassroots community worker from Nepal and part of the OneWorld official delegation to PrepCom 3. Report Bidisha Pillai and T. N. Anuradha from Geneva.

27.09.2005 APDIP's Open Regional Dialogue on Internet Governance initiative zooms in on the Internet governance issues, priorities and challenges faced by five countries in Asia.The report results are drawn from extensive consultations and a survey involving all stakeholders (government, the private sector and civil society), and region-wide research undertaken over the past year, as part of the Open Regional Dialogue on Internet Governance (ORDIG).

06.09.2005 At the World Information Technology Forum (WITFOR) conference in Gaborone, the "Gaborone Declaration" proposal was adopted, which will be presented to the UNESCO general assembly.

29.07.2005 UGANDA has been chosen to host the Collaboration on International ICT Policy for East and Southern Africa (CIPESA).

15.07.2005 Within the framework of its mandate to promote the preservation of cultural heritage, UNESCO, in collaboration with Institute for Communication and Development (IICD), the HEART Trust/NTA and the Institute for the Connectivity of the Americas, (ICA), will hold a 5-day regional workshop on the Digitization of Cultural Heritage and Digital Libraries in Jamaica, July 18-22, 2005.