[iosn-general] Plone eases NGO access to ICT in South Asia rural areas

[Sunil Abraham]

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From: rajiv_r_in <rajiv_r_in at yahoo.com>
To: sunil at apdip.net
Subject: Fwd: Plone eases NGO access to ICT in South Asia rural areas
Date: Mon, 19 Mar 2007 06:32:05 -0000

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Plone eases NGO access to ICT in South Asia rural areas
by Nicolas Bossut — last modified 2007-03-10 12:40 

OneWorld South Asia developed on Plone, an open source Content 
Management System (CMS), a customized technology solution named Ek 
Duniya Web Services. Through Ek-Duniya, OWSA seeks to exploit the 
democratic potential of the internet, making it accessible and 
useful to the communities that need it the most. Ek Duniya is 
already reaching over 70 organizations in India, Sri Lanka and 
Bangladesh. This article outlines benefits open source software 
brings to society.

OneWorld South Asia, the south Asian centre of OneWorld 
International Foundation, works to facilitate human rights and 
sustainable development in the region by leveraging a range of media 
and Information Communication Technologies (ICTs).

According to team that manages the Ek-Duniya initiative at OneWorld 
South Asia, "Plone gives us the freedom to design appropriate 
solutions for target groups working on a range of development issues 
across the country. We have helped develop web spaces for activists 
working on the human rights of dalits, tribals, women, children, and 
also for groups working on development equity, social justice, 
health, education and environmental protection."

"Considering the bandwidth constraints and other technological 
bottlenecks that characterize the use of ICTs in rural areas of 
South Asia, our team has customized various products to facilitate 
content acquisition through mail, enable RSS feeds, create photo 
albums and share audio content. Thus Ek-Duniya is being continuously 
upgraded through a two-way relationship with our users, where we 
constantly learn from them and they from us." 

Ek-Duniya helps grassroots communities and intermediate civil 
society organizations to have a quality web presence not only in 
English but also in local languages; in time they have been 
successful in using their websites as platforms for development 
communication and advocacy. 

This initiative has enabled south Asian civil society organizations 
to:


Improve flow of local information at the grassroots.
Enhance the use of ICTs as a strategic communication tool especially 
in Indic languages – to exchange knowledge resources and 
experiences – thereby strengthening the civil society efforts for 
sustainable development, poverty reduction and social justice.
Support the development of an online community of development 
practitioners in south Asia to lobby for proactive state and civil 
society action on issues affecting the marginalized, to advocate for 
better transparency in governance, and to facilitate pro-poor policy 
discourse.

Ek-Duniya incorporates user-specific training that provides input on 
content management, graphics design, e-communication strategy, as 
well as hosting & site management. It also includes post 
implementation handholding support to reinforce the newly acquired 
skills and to resolve any difficulty in partners' work on the web.

Ek-Duniya has reached over 70 partner organizations in India, Sri 
Lanka and Bangladesh. Building on these experiences and learning, 
OneWorld South Asia continues to work at extending Ek-Duniya to the 
wider civil society fraternity, including organizations working on 
Tsunami rehabilitation and reconstruction, and the Global Call to 
Action against Poverty (GCAP). 

Some examples of organisations which have taken advantage of 
OneWorld South Asia's services under the Ek-Duniya Programme include:

People's Action for Development (PAD) : This is a bilingual site 
(Tamil and English) for people in the Tsunami affected coastal 
districts of TamilNadu in south India. PAD operates pro– nature 
interventions for strengthening food and livelihood security through 
conservation and sustainable use of natural resources. Since the 
Tsunami hit these districts in December 2004, focus has shifted to 
rehabilitation and reconstruction.

Global Call to Action against Poverty (GCAP) : The Global Call to 
Action against Poverty is a global network of organisations engaged 
in inspiring people to hold world leaders accountable and to work 
together with civil society in the fight to end poverty. This 
global, multilingual website in French, Spanish, Arabic and English 
acts as a centre for campaign related information and collective 
action.

Kalpavriksh Environment Action Group : Kalpavriksh is a well 
established and well known grassroots NGO that has taken positions 
on a number of environment-development issues in India, more often 
than not confronting the state through measures ranging from protest 
letters to street demonstrations.

Centre for Education and Communication : CEC-India is a resource 
centre for labour, which aims to benefit workers in the unorganised 
and informal sectors. It has grown to be a centre for workers' 
education and participatory labour research. 

Health and Nutrition Information Centre : This is the official 
website of the Department of Health, Puttalam District in the North 
Western Province of Sri Lanka. In line with the vision of using 
information to create the best health service delivery system in the 
country while contributing to building a healthy nation, the website 
provides relevant health related information on a wide range of 
topics.

Source: http://www.zeapartners.org/articles/oneworld006

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