Achieving the UN Millennium Development Goals

This blog's purpose is to connect in an every widening and deepening manner with others across the globe in support of the United Nation's Millennium Development Goals.

Let's be the first generation to end poverty by 2015 with the United Nations' Eight Goal Millennium Campaign.
1. End Hunger 2. Universal Education 3. Gender Equity 4. Child Health 5. Maternal Health 6. Combat HIV/AIDS and other diseases 7. Environmental Sustainability 8. Global Partnership.

Learn more about what this weblog is trying to accomplish at the new PBworks Wiki.

What If - Millennium Development Goals Ending Poverty 2015

Saturday, January 10, 2009

Collaboration Tools for the Millennium Development Goals.

Sphere: Related Content

This blog takes two approaches. One, learning more about the UN Millennium Development Goals and related programs. Two, learning more about using Web 2.0 tools to learn more about and to promote the UN Millennium Development Goals. These basically include so far blogging and social-tagging. This has been the subject of discussion at the End POVERTY / Fim POBREZA forum Leveraging Social Media. Last month I found some great resources that were featured in the post Implications for Aid Practice - From the Citizen Perspective and The Global Perspective. Afterward, I received some kind appreciation from Elizabeth Corley of the Development Gateway Foundation.

Dear Brian,

We appreciate the links on your blog to dgCommunities and Development Gateway.

Elizabeth Corley
Director of Communications
Development Gateway Foundation
1889 F Street NW, Second Floor
Washington, DC 20006 USA

Information Tools. Global Partnerships. Effective Aid.

Those resources have already been described as extensive and expansive, but they go even further than that. They begin to meet the challenge of making the web a collaborative platform for these efforts, and does so in a way that is of educational use for the learner and of practical knowledge for the practitioner. It fulfills one of the wishes from the forum discussion, finding better means of collaboration.

Once these ideas were in mind, similar resources began popping up. Some from the European Forum on International Co-operation or EUFORIC. EUFORIC introduced me to ComPart, who introduced me to ICCO.

ComPart provides the Web 2.0 tools, and the site itself is a PBwiki site, providing directions on Working with this site and ComPart, providing information on how to Get trained on ComPart, Linking & Learning Wiki and the ComPart Learning Blog. I also downloaded their toolbar, which features ICCO Alliance feeds.

The ComPart system is being developed within the ICCO-Alliance as to sustain the COMmunication with PARTners. It is a combination of (mostly) free Internet based applications that are all user friendly and stimulate participation and collaboration.
The ICCO applies those tools through a variety of different partnerships in fulfilling its mission which is:

The ICCO Alliance’s mission is to strive for a world in which people can live in dignity and well-being. The Alliance focuses on three main themes:

  • Fair Economic Development
  • Democratisation and Peacebuilding
  • Access to Basic Services
The ICCO Alliance works on these themes in over 50 countries through the ICCO Alliance Operation Plan 2007-2010 (pdf)
With ICCO, I took advantage by downloading their search tool, which features not only Google searches, but icco alliance, euforic, focuss and Wikipedia searches as well.

Maarten Boers, the administrator of ICCO-Alliance Learning Network, explains below how Compart is suppose to work as a collaborative tool. I received a response from Mr. Boers regarding joining the ICCO-Alliance, but have not been granted access just yet.



Finally, both introduced me to Dgroups.

Welcome to Dgroups, the starting point for fostering groups and communities in international development. We are a partnership which caters to both individuals and organisations by offering tools and services that bring people together. Whether you are trying to support a team, a group, a network, a partnership or a community, we hope to provide you with the capacity to do this in an environment which is simple, non-commercial, respectful of privacy, and targeted at low bandwidth users in the South. Learn more here.

Again, this is collaborative effort with numerous current partners including Bellanet, DFID, Hivos, ICA, ICCO, IICD, OneWorld, UNAIDS and WorldBank. Member organizations include CGIAR, CIDA, CTA, Danida, FAO, IDRC, INASP, KIT, SNV, Sida, SDC, and UNECA.

So now my list of what I can learn about the Millennium Development Goals and related organizations, program, projects, and Web 2.0 tools has grown expontentially. My latest endeavor is signing up for a PBwiki account. Finally, I decided that all this rates having its own section on this blog - Collaborative Tools for the Millennium Development Goals.

Millennium Bloggers (more at the Wiki)

Global News Sources

The Other Blog - My Pathways to New Paradigms

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