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Welcome to Digital Opportunity Channel
16 May 2002
by Kanti Kumar & Andy Carvin
On behalf of OneWorld and the Benton Foundation's Digital Divide Network, we'd like to welcome you to Digital Opportunity Channel (DOC). This new online community launched the week of World Telecommunications Day -- 17 May 2002 -- whose theme this year is "Information and Communication Technologies for All: Empowering People to Cross the Digital Divide." The channel, we hope, will do just that: empowering practitioners, community leaders, policymakers and academics with the tools and information they need to utilize ICTs for improving quality of life around the world.
The channel is the culmination of over a year-long partnership between two organizations: OneWorld and the Digital Divide Network. OneWorld is the world's leading online coalition of civil society organisations utilizing the Internet to promote human rights and global development. With more than 1,250 partner organisations, OneWorld creates portals that serve as an international platform for its members, giving voice to local leaders in human rights and global development -- leaders that might otherwise be drowned out by the cacophony of commercial world media.
The Benton Foundation's Digital Divide Network (DDN), founded in 1999, was initially created as an online community of practitioners and policymakers in the United States interested in developing comprehensive strategies for bridging the digital divide. Rather than addressing the digital divide as merely an issue of providing Internet access, DDN embraced a broader, multi-sector and multi-disciplinary interpretation of the digital divide, tackling the issue in terms of literacy and skills development, content development, economic well-being, cultural diversity and civil rights, along with access and other perspectives. In its first three years, DDN has served as a leading voice on digital divide issues, providing the latest news, research and case studies from the people in the field who know the issue best.
In late 2000, OneWorld and DDN began to explore the possibility of creating a new online service that would focus on ICTs and digital divide issues at the international level. For OneWorld, such a service would be a natural extension of its programme to develop online "channels" such as debtchannel.org and learningchannel.org, which address key issues from the perspective of NGOs around the world. Similarly, DDN sought to take its online community model, which had proved successful in the U.S., and expand it to include more international points of view.
After many detailed discussions, both OneWorld and DDN concluded that their goals were more than just similar; in fact, they complemented each other so well that they should unite around a single Web site. This new site, to be headquartered at OneWorld South Asia in New Delhi, would simultaneously explore strategies for using ICTs for global development and for bridging the digital divide. Whether ICTs are being used to improve development programmes in the South, or are providing citizens of the world with new tools for gathering and publishing information vital to their communities, the end goal was indeed the same. The new channel would address strategies for providing digital opportunity: using ICTs to improve quality of life, no matter how disadvantaged or isolated a community might be.
Digital Opportunity Channel will be edited jointly, with OneWorld South Asia's Kanti Kumar coordinating news, and DDN's Andy Carvin coordinating feature content out of the Benton Foundation's office in Washington DC. The channel is also in the process of bringing together an editorial advisory board comprised of ICT and development leaders from around the world. This board will help guide us developing our overall editorial strategy and help us maintain our mission.
So again, we'd like to thank you for your interest in the Digital Opportunity Channel. We're eager to learn more about your work, your experiences and your challenges. Please consider the channel as a platform for your work, and contact us at
doeditors@oneworld.net if you ever wish to share a story, news, research or events that would be of interest to our readers. We truly hope the channel will serve as a global, multidisciplinary community for providing digital opportunity to the citizens of the world -- and we look forward to working with you to reach this goal.
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