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Community Grants Programme

Blog for Chapter Grantees to provide updates on their projects to the greater ISOC community

Internet Society Grant Enables Solar-Powered Internet Connectivity in Lascahobas, Haiti!

On December 13-14, 2011, a partnered team from Illinois Institute of Technology, Green Wifi, and Inveneo worked together to bring solar-powered Internet connectivity to the EFACAP school in Lascahobas, Haiti. Thanks to funding from an Internet Society Community grant, this team first established a long distance Internet connection to the school, and then set up point-to-multipoint wifi hotspots across the school’s campus.

In August, 2011, the IIT and Green Wifi team installed a 2.4 Kilowatt solar p.v. powering system at the EFACAP school. Now that the laptops could be charged, the team’s next goal was to establish an Internet connection, so that the teachers, students, and administration could have access to unlimited information from the world wide web, but also, so that those at the school in Lascahobas would be able to communicate with the team in the US. From the beginning of this project, one of the team’s goals was to enable communication to foster collaboration between the two groups. Being able to communicate over the Internet should facilitate this.

The backbone tower in Lascahobas, to which the EFACAP school is connected, is one of many set up across the country as part of the Inveneo-led Rural Broadband Initiative to form a high-speed wireless backbone across Haiti. This initiative’s objective is to bring affordable, reliable and sustainable broadband access to 6 regions and 20 un-served population centers across Haiti. The Internet Society grant, which enabled our team to leverage the commitment of a two-year anchor tenant contract with the EFACAP school, was a contributing factor toward the Rural Broadband Initiative’s decision to place Internet towers in this region, thereby including it in the national backbone, which means that this grant’s potential reach and contribution to Internet connectivity and use in Haiti go far beyond the single connection at the EFACAP school!

As part of their BATI program, Inveneo is training and certifying local Haitian technicians from regions across the country in Internet connectivity setup and related small-business skills. The EFACAP school Internet installation was used as a hands-on training session for five BATI technicians.

Once the long-distance link from downtown Lascahobas to the (semi-rural) school was established, the team worked together to establish multiple solar-powered wifi hotspots across the school’s campus. After connectivity was established, the IIT team met with the school’s teachers, only two of whom had ever used the Internet before, to instruct them in how to get online, use search tools and a server, and finally, to set up email addresses!

The EFACAP school in Lascahobas was the recipient of about 400 laptops from a much larger laptop donation that the Haitian Ministry of Education received in 2009, with the stated goal of improving the quality of primary education. However, as is the case with the vast majority of primary schools across Haiti, the EFACAP school had no way to provide the power to charge the laptops—in this school’s case, it was the result of the grid no longer providing them power after the devastating earthquake that hit Port au Prince in 2010.

Our team looks forward to returning to the school in the first half of 2012. While we are confident that the Inveneo BATI team is capable of installing, supporting and maintaining the Internet and related connectivity technology, our team plans to host a training session (for the BATI and beyond) focusing on solar powering technology and on wifi technology, so that these complementary technologies can similarly be locally supported and maintained. With each visit, we are working to increase local capacities, as well as local support for the project in order that it can be fully locally owned, maintained, and supported.

Posted: Thursday, January 5th, 2012 by ljhosman

The Solar-Powered Internet Center Breaks Ground!

Dear ISOC Family & Fellow ISOC Grantees:

I am pleased to bring this second update to you, on behalf of our project implementation team, regarding the current status on the implementation of the solar-powered Internet kiosk at Loita Hills Academy in the Maasai Mara. If you missed my first post on this project, you can read it here!

The Learning Center broke ground on October 11th. In exactly one month, our team has built something extraordinary! John, our lead construction head, and his team, our architect Charles Newman, and volunteers from the community have all had to battle harsh obstacles.  They have had to ship in water from four hours away, which is no easy task. There are no roads in Loita, so getting lorries here is a massive undertaking.  The Maasai warriors searched for weeks to find the perfect tree to replant inside our Learning Center. When they found it, they carried it over six kilometers!  The women in charge of the bottle cap beading wall broke into three teams and made prototypes of different designs and beadwork.  The community will vote this week on the design to be used.  They counted and sorted over 70,000 bottle caps that had been collected from all over the world and shipped for free by FedEx!  They are constantly strategizing the most effective implementation for next week, when the concrete wall is ready for the decor, to carefully lay thousands of colorful bottlecaps into a Maasai-like pattern that will make this building unlike any other building in the world. The entire construction phase is estimated to be complete in 14 days. At that point, we will switch gears to the technology side and implement the solar-powered Internet kiosk. It is incredible to think this huge undertaking will be complete in less than two months of total time from start to finish.

Imagine an invisible part of the world, now visible through technology!

Our partners in this endeavor are: ISOC, Greystone Aviation, Voices of Africa for Sustainable Development, Charles Newman Designer, Lil’ MDGs, Adele’s Literacy Library, Youth Service America , and FedEx.

On behalf of our Project Implementation Team,

Dylan Mahalingam | dylan@undertheacacia.org
undertheacacia.org | loitahillsacademy.com | the7campaign.com
p:  +1 603 722 0414  or +1 917 968 5812  (USA) | +254 (0) 724 698 123 (Kenya)
f: +1 603 546 7830
Facebook  | Twitter

Posted: Monday, November 7th, 2011 by Dylan

The research titled: “Understanding the Factors that Force Down Ethiopia’s Rankings in the Digital Economy and their Implications in the ICTs Policy and Strategy” has Reached its Final Milestone- Dissemination of the Research Results.

Executive Summary
The true effects of information and communication technologies(ICTs) on the socio-economic transformations of a country is still an under-researched theme, even more so in developing countries such as Ethiopia. The application of ICTs tools in Ethiopia is believed to be way too low, however, where ICTs have been applied there is still limited research and documentation to generate evidence and lessons for enhancing further the utilization of ICTs in the country’s development programs. This research was carried out mainly to provide a glimpse of the country’s digital lag and the way forward towards fast-tracked ascent to ICTs diffusion and adoption.

Through a combination of policy, infrastructures development, and the power of mobile solutions the divide between the high-income countries and the developing countries is narrowing where these investments are made. Despite the rising influence of mobile technologies on development programs developing countries are yet to maximize the benefits that mobile devices have presented. The digital lag that developing countries accrued over the years is threatening development efforts, therefore stepping up the diffusion and adoption of ICTs towards building an inclusive information society cannot be overdued unduly no matter how the constraints the country has been and is still under are severe.

In this study a range of factors that inhibit Ethiopia from making the required progresses in the diffusion and adoption of ICTs have been indentified and discussed, an attempt to scan the status of the digital progression of the country with respect to the parameters or indices the Economy Intelligence Unit has been using to gauge countries digital economy rankings has been made. Accordingly, a high-level roadmap towards the creation of an enabling environment for socioeconomic transformation that can go a long way in providing the country a pleasant picture in the digital economy rankings has been presented.

The key findings of the study are presented below:
- Gaps in the existing ICTs policy have been observed in that elements such as universal broadband Internet penetration policy and mobile devices policy(given their meteoric penetration in the region as well as in the country ) are missing. Broadband is becoming more and more today’s transformation technology. To truly harness the power of ICTs towards creating a knowledge-based society and keep pace with the digitally evolving economy, a policy level commitment to expedite broadband roll-out across all parts of the country is urgently needed.
- There has been a perceived lack of keeping the ICTs policy in tune with the technology dynamics. Given the volatility of technologies there needs to be a follow up evolution or ongoing update of the ICTs policy.
- The Internet penetration in the country is worryingly low which stands in the way of achieving the goal of creating a knowledge-based as well as inclusive information society. Factors such as high-priced subscription fee or cost as well as web and ICTs illiteracy have exacerbated problems of lack of adequate penetration on Internet as well as ICTs use. The challenges call for a business model that targets the wide spread use of the technologies, among other things.
- Internet services in Cyber cafés are popular, moderately used and in high demand. High-priced subscription fee or cost, connection slowness as well as unreliability have been the main hurdles to run Cyber cafés as businesses. Therefore, support at all levels(including a policy level commitment) for Cyber cafés or community-based Internet access points is urgently needed for overhauling the existing Internet penetration rate which by any standard is way too low. In this study, a functional model for Internet use tailored to Ethiopian context is proposed.
- There is enormous challenge to get a country of Ethiopia’s size to the level of both web and ICTs literacy required for the creation of a knowledge-based society, the fact that the largest chunk of the population lack proficiency in international languages adds new dimension to the challenge. The country needs to replicate the success that it has achieved in functional literacy towards web and ICTs literacy. There has been the expedition of several successful campaigns to help the illiterate citizens able to complete real-life tasks, such as reading, writing and understand written materials and simple instructions and a similar level of commitment by the government to expedite ICTs literacy campaigns is highly required.
- Lack of local contents is also another hurdle that stands in the way of the wider diffusion and adoption of ICTs as well as the Internet in the country. A policy that promotes the development of local content(both in local and international languages) is urgently needed, this to some extent would ease the language barrier that stand in the way of both enhanced Internet as well as ICTs penetration.
- When gauged or scanned with respect to the parameters or indices(such as connectivity and telecommunication Infrastructure, Internet and mobile networks, business environment, social and cultural environment, legal environment, government policy and vision and consumer and business ICTs adoption) used by the Economy Intelligence Unit, the Ethiopian ICTs landscape needs grand and all round changes including the further ramp up of ICTs as well as Internet penetration rates. A high level roadmap to enhance Ethiopia’s rankings in the digital economy is suggested.
- There has been recognition by the government on ICTs as a major enabler of social and economic changes which has been demonstrated in the five years general transformation plan of the country. The attention given to the telecom sector in the five years plan is quite promising in that it could be seen as a new dawn that can put the country in good stead in the global arena. The achievements of the major milestones set out in the five years plan would herald large scale improvements as well as expansions in telecommunication services in the country’s history which would also in the global arena help the country improve its ranking in the digital economy.

In a nut shell, there needs to be a wider policy drive to increase ICTs diffusion and adoption in the country. It is also important to recognize that access to ICTs is a necessary condition for digital inclusion or over-coming the digital divide, however access alone is insufficient to make available the range of opportunities for economic and social advance on the broadest possible basis of which ICTs are capable and which have so massively transformed business and governments. Thus, augmenting access to ICTs with effective use would ensure the realization of socioeconomic transformation that Ethiopia highly needs or craves.

Posted: Thursday, September 8th, 2011 by dessalegn

Progress on the implementation of the solar-powered Internet kiosk at Loita Hills Academy in Kenya

Posted: Saturday, September 3rd, 2011 by Dylan

Starting up the Armenian Internet Exchange” project

Armenian Internet Traffic Exchange “Armix” Foundation in collaboration with Web LLC, ISOC AM, Union of Information Technology Enterprises is implementing “Starting up the Armenian Internet Exchange project, supported by ISOC and aimed to build the capacity of ARMIX-Armenian Internet Exchange to insure the high level and quality of local traffic exchange infrastructure.

The main factor of success was the consolidation of local and international partners and their active involvement in the project. Besides main counterparts of the project, we supportive attitude of AMS=IX, Euro-IX and personally Henk Steeman and Serge Radkovich allowed us to acquire BigIron 15000 which will provide us the opportunity to provide high quality of traffic exchange and other services not only in Armenia, but potentially in the regional level as well.

Posted: Wednesday, August 3rd, 2011 by armix

Internet School for Farmers

Internet School for Farmers Internet School for Farmers aims to enable the creation of elearning courses for local farmers to learn about sustainable agriculture practices. An online community portal is being created with content covering topics including; sustainable agriculture, soil erosion, water pollution, livestock and composting and linking agriculture knowledge and help desk services from the government, and finally promoting to rural farmers to imporve their access to e-Agriculture.

Progress:

We have been working on awareness and development of technologies and content. This project done in local languages is challenging as local language technologies are still grooming. However we were able to obtain relevent content and support from the contributors. We found at our awareness sessions that local farmers do not use Internet for learning as well as promoting their produces. One of the major outcomes we expect from the project is to enable e learning and trading of commodities on the Internet as a long term goal which will help reduce their costs of travel and improve the environment. We think major beneficiaries of our project is upcoming youth and women. Following are some of the photos from the project.

Posted: Friday, July 8th, 2011 by niranjanmeegammana

Internet Society Grant to Enable Internet Connectivity in Lascahobas, Haiti

The Internet Society has awarded a Community Grant to a partnered project that will bring Internet connectivity to Lascahobas, Haiti, in August 2011. The partners in this project are: Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT Empowering Haiti), Green WiFi, OLPC Haiti, and Inveneo

Pictured Above: Ecole St. Gabriel, Ecole Baptiste

The schools in the village of Lascahobas are part of a One Laptop per Child (OLPC) project in Haiti. At present, the schools lack two key conditions for realizing project success: electricity and Internet connectivity. The “IIT Empowering Haiti” team has been working with OLPC Haiti, under the mentorship of Green WiFi, to design and implement a solar powering solution so that the laptops may be charged at the schools. The Internet Society Grant will enable an after-school cyber-learning center and two primary schools to be connected to the Internet.

Pictured Above: the Computer-Learning Center, Lascahobas

The solar-powering project team is partnering with Inveneo to carry out this complementary Internet connectivity project. For its part, Inveneo is doing great things on the ground across Haiti. In March 2011,  Inveneo began holding technician-training programs in Haiti, as the starting point for the Rural Broadband Connectivity Program (RBCP), which is being deployed by Inveneo in partnership with local Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and Haitian entrepreneurs (the RBCP program is funded by the Clinton Bush Haiti Fund, Microsoft, and the EKTA Foundation).

The purpose of the training sessions is to prepare a cadre of trained and certified Haitian technicians who are capable of deploying, operating, and supporting a wireless-backbone of Internet connectivity for connecting NGOs and other small businesses across Haiti. In order to promote local capacity building and sustainability, Inveneo recruits, trains, and certifies local ICT professionals. In turn, after hands-on guidance with their first project, these trained entrepreneurs subsequently themselves perform the installation, maintenance, and support for ongoing and future endeavors. These local technicians will spearhead the technology deployment to connect the Lascahobas schools to the Internet, the OLPC Haiti team will receive training in basic technology maintenance, while the team from IIT will carry out a baseline survey, so that progress reports can document achievements and ongoing usage patterns.

The image above depicts the long-distance WiFi link from Mirebalais to the Lascahobas After School Computer Center, and the point-to-point links that will connect the schools. The solar powered WiFi used in this project will be approached and documented as a repeatable model for the other +40 schools in Haiti that will receive the 14,000 OLPC XO the Haiti OLPC office is rolling out.

In December 2011, the IIT team plans to carry out an additional assessment survey to gauge connectivity quality, level of Internet use (demand for and type of use), and support and maintenance performed by the OLPC Haiti team, and make recommendations for improvements as the project continues and scales.

Stay tuned for updates–deployment takes place in about one month!!

Posted: Wednesday, July 6th, 2011 by ljhosman

The study titled “Understanding The Factors That Force Down Ethiopia’s Rankings in The Digital Economy” has reached the first milestone of the project.

Based on a set of benchmark indicators, every year a rank on countries digital economy or e-readiness is gauged and subsequently a report is released.  In the reports for many years now Ethiopia has been in the bottom pack earning a very low score on the designated benchmark indicators. Cognizant of the importance of ICT in stirring developmental programs Ethiopia has placed ICT high in the priority list. In spite of recent developments on the launch of several ICT projects, the country has an uphill to climb in terms of achieving a better level of ICT and Internet diffusions.  For Ethiopia to stand a chance of making meaningful enhancements in its rankings in the digital economy, its ICT policy needs to be geared towards fulfilling some of the benchmark indicators requirements based on the situations on the ground. However, until now a study to reveal the extent of the digital lag that the country is experiencing has not been conducted as a result not much is known about the level of Internet usage and ICT tools in general. Thus, in order to get better insights on the extent of the digital lag that can lead to policy amendments, a study on Internet usage practices, government planned, ongoing and completed ICT initiatives is underway with the support obtained from ISOC community grant program.

The first phase of the study has been completed, activities which include questionnaires design and administration, conducting key informants interviews, designing methodological framework and processing the data collected using a software tool have been carried out successfully. Preliminary results suggest that ICT and Internet penetration or density as well as the quality of service and experience in the country is very low which call for immediate action. We have entered into the next and final phase of the project, which is about analyses of the data gathered and preparing the report which would provide research inputs to policy makers needed to inform their policy decisions towards enhancing the country’s digital economy rankings.

Posted: Thursday, May 19th, 2011 by dessalegn

[English]

New activism, new hope

Imagine a country where 400 women and girls are raped everyday, where they have to walk sometimes 9 km to find the first health center and where after all, they will have to pay to have access to the basic treatment they deserve for the most cruel and brutal sexual violence done to them.

Imagine again that they will have to find a plausible reason to hide while they have to travel so far and for so long on foot to the next village which is not the next district.

This is the life of many women and girls in DRC.

They are the innocent victims of armed conflicts that take place since 1995. Those who are supposed to protect them, police and the army, are also among the perpetrators.

Not taking a seat while these horrible crimes are being made, we young women of a feminist organization, few of us moved by the  passion for technology but the majority sharing the destiny of our survivors sisters, we have decided to come together with others women activists from Zimbabwe to set up a information service using mobile phones to give the basic information so crucial to those who survive rape, sexual enslavement when forcibly constricted in armed groups, and domestic violence so that they can know what to do next.

We help also those who feel threatened because they want to speak out and we also provide psychological advice in more then 7 local languages for those who want it, using Skype, one of the most common voice over IP applications.

The Internet helps us to access affordable communications when it is not free. With this project, we are happy to have been part of this new activism and we endeavor to continue.

[French]

Nouveau militantisme, nouvel espoir

Imaginez un pays où 400 femmes et filles sont violées chaque jour, où elles doivent parfois  marcher sur 9 Km pour trouver le premier centre de santé et où, après tout, elles doivent payer pour avoir accès aux soins les plus basiques qu’elless méritent pourtant pour avoir survecu a l’une des formes les plus cruels et brutales de violence sexuelle.
Imaginez encore une fois qu’elles auront à trouver une raison plausible pour cacher, pourquoi elles ont du voyager, tres souvent a pieds, aussi loin et aussi longtemps jusqu’au prochain village  quand ce n’est pas  le  prochain district.

C’est la vie de nombreuses femmes et filles en Republique democratiue du Congo.

Elles sont les victimes innocentes des conflits armés qui ont lieu depuis 1995. Ceux qui sont censés les protéger, la police et l’armée sont aussi parmi ceux qui les violent.

Pour ne pas rester assise, lorsque ces crimes horribles se font, nous, les jeunes femmes d’une organisation féministe, certaines d’entre nous mues par la passion pour la technologie, mais la grande majorité partageant le destin de nos sœurs survivantes, nous avons décidé de nous mettre ensemble avec d’autres femmes militantes du Zimbabwe pour mettre en place un service d’informations  utilisant le téléphone portable pour partager une information de base, mais si importante pour celles qui survivent au viol, l’esclavage sexuel quant elles sont enrôlées de force dans les groupes armés et les violences domestiques afin qu’elles puissent savoir ce qu’il faut faire ensuite.

Nous aidons aussi celles qui se sentent menacées parce qu’elles veulent le dénoncer et nous offrons aussi de l’aide psychologique en ligne et cela dans plus de 7 langues locales pour celles qui le veulent, en utilisant Skype, l’une applications les plus courantes de voix sur Internet (VOip).

Internet nous permet d’accéder aux communications à prix abordable quand il n’est pas gratuit. Avec ce projet, nous sommes heureux d’avoir fait partie de ce nouveau militantisme et nous promettons de continuer.

Posted: Monday, April 18th, 2011 by mukuku

Dear Fellow ISOC Grantees and the entire ISOC family,

We proudly bring you a progressive update about our project; “Enabling the People of Ibanda to Access Internet”

We have so far gone three months into the implementation of this project; the project that has enabled the creation of the first Internet Centre in Ibanda Sub-county.  From the time the centre was launched on 4^th January 2011, the internet has been open to users/beneficiaries and trainings are going on.

Everything has gone smoothly (as planned) throughout this period. The Internet centre was established as planned and is serving the intended purpose in a very fruitful way. All players came on board and performed excellently. IT training is being carried out thoroughly especially for the registered members of Ibanda Communities Transformation and the people of Ibanda now have access to high speed and reliable internet. They no longer have to travel 110 kilometers to go to the nearest town for internet. 

During these past months of implementation, it is coming out very strongly that internet is a needed service in this Sub County. Many people (including those from the neighboring sub counties) flock the centre everyday for internet. We have learnt that in future, we will face the task of expanding the centre to be able to meet the demands of this enormous need by creating branches in the neighboring sub counties or by encouraging community based organizations in those sub counties to take up the initiative of starting such a project for their people.

Posted by:

Posted: Friday, March 4th, 2011 by Ibanda Communities Transformation