Web 2.0 and Social Impact from the Ground Up and from the Server Out

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The focus of Development Gateway Foundation's dgCommunities (previous post) is providing web-based tools to make aid and development efforts more effective by increasing access to critical information, building local capacity and bringing partners together for positive change. Somewhat like computer geeks looking for some do-gooders to help. They are in the field, having just opened as opened a new office in Dakar, Senegal, but work more it seems on upgrading aid management systems or improving user interface.

The ICCO Alliance and its many partners or sponsors, including EUFORIC, seem to focus their efforts more towards on the ground efforts in aid relief than dgCommunities. They are also though seeking to extent their reach and effectiveness by using Web 2.0. tools, so do-gooders looking for help from the computer geeks. From the Web 2.0 perspective this would be the Integration of Collaborative Information Systems in Web 2.0 (pdf), but from the field operatives perspective looking to communicate and collaborate with other aid organizations it is ComPart.

Their system is impressive and should be a model for other collaborative progressive efforts on the Internet. While dgCommunities is out of Washington D.C., I have thought for a while that the Europeans were better at using the Internet for social action at the grassroots level than we are in the States. While we may have more people on Facebook signing up for the latest cause, Europe including Great Britain seem better at using Web 2.0 for socially beneficial impact.

The ICCO is now using these tools to create better connections with aid efforts going on in the southern hemisphere of our planet ComPart Learning Blog: ComPart South 2009 workshop

In 2007, ICCO started a project (with support from Euforic) working with Knowledge and Learning Networks. The project aims to contribute to ICCO Alliance capacity building, learning networks, and knowledge.

The basis for the ComPart system is ComPart Flowers. This 30 minute presentation found on blip.tv provides a more extensive look at what makes up the ComPart Flowers system:

Some of the tools used are blogs, social tagging and wikis. One outcome of these efforts is the web2share wiki.

This wiki introduces some 'building blocks' - tools and applications - for open information, knowledge sharing and communication in development. It builds on the efforts of ICCO, Euforic and their partners. It supports further investments in these tools and approaches.

The ICCO Alliance/ComPart folks are not having any trouble finding the computer geek types to help them including the founder of PBWiki, David Weekly.

David Weekly in the ComPart Learning Blog Post: Wiki, wiki, wiki, meet David Weekly.., explains his interest to listen to experiences of wiki users from Nepal, Mali, Burkina Faso, Chile and Costa Rica during his participation in the ComPart support workshop in the Netherlands. He also explains how PBwiki continues to try to make wikis easier to use and how valuable it has been to meet some major daily users of the PBwiki platform.

Other tools include social-tagging on sites like Delicious of favorites like Everyone's bookmarks for "Happy Capacity Building".

How to promote a learning culture in an organization with huge workloads and pressure for the young staff? Start from scratch, from their needs and wishes, and help them crystallize their own ideas.

Most of what is featured here came from the ComPart toolbar, which I downloaded but can't now find a live link. I should disclose that I am not part of any of these organizations. I am just impressed and believe that even looking from the outside in that there is a great deal to learn.

diigo tags: compart, pbwiki, collaboration, web2share, wiki, web2.0, euforic, delicious, capacity, ICCO, euforic

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Updating Resources dgCommunities

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This blog became aware of dgCommunities last year and started to link back then. What was not fully appreciate back then was the tremendous amount of information that was available. The dgCommunities website is still part of the Collaboration Tools for the Millennium Development Goals found at the right hand column. The latest addition is giving dgCommunities its own section featuring links to specific areas of interest - Information and Communication Technologies, Capacity Development and Knowledge Economy.

The folks at dgCommunities obviously recognize the issue of information overload because near the top of each e-mail is the question "Too much e-mail?" The information content of this blog is exponentially going beyond the capabilities of one individual to absorb so I will be picking what is of interest and trying new strategies for organization.

Related posts:
Insights From dgCommunities
Collaboration Tools for the Millennium Development Goals
Implications for Aid Practice - From the Citizen Perspective and The Global Perspective

Insights From dgCommunities

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Some recent explorations through the dgCommunities sites revealed some interesting insights into the topics that this blog has been pondering lately. One line of thought has been the immensity of the challenge facing the effort to implement the Millennium Development Goals. More so now that the world is facing a financial crisis. Raising the question as what are NGO's or change-agent organizations doing in light of this?

NGOs Pare Down in Face of Financial Crisis

Some of the biggest development and humanitarian NGOs are laying off staff or revising programmes for 2009 as their income streams flatten because of the global financial crisis. Fundraising experts of three of the world's top NGOs - Oxfam GB, Save the Children UK and World Vision USA - said programme growth will slow in 2009 as a result of the squeeze.

There are other actions that can be taken that don't depend as much upon a large flow of financing to fund massive projects. Providing knowledge for empowerment or broad based solidarity is a form of action for which the Internet is especially suited. This blog is being defined, along with countless others, as a "small voice" blog. A description well suited for sites with minimal resources but a wealth of good metta. This blog and my other have been exploring the tools available on the web to reach others through social media, but there is also a wisdom in the use of those tools. Kasem Ali wrote about this January 8, 2009. I have summarized to a substantial degree below as a set of quick notes to be learned and applied, and his original article should be read.

A Triumph of Trust: Five Principles of Nonprofit Social Media Strategy

Nonprofits are getting a grip on the fact that their stakeholder have the tools to reach as many people as they do and that there are powerful opportunities to be pursued as a result. Broadly speaking, this is seen as the challenge of social media. Too many organizations are treating their vocal stakeholders as either journalists with whom they must be careful, or as followers to whom they must market. Drawing from my experience in treating journalists as human beings, this article describes five principles of social media strategy that chart a better way.

(1) Don't Take It Personally: Assume that most of the time, most people will have little interest in what you have to say.

(2) Tell the Truth: Don't lie. Don't sanitize. Don't obfuscate. Sound like a real person.


(3) Make Their Job Easy: Study what people write and share. Figure out what else they need when they're considering your stuff and give it to them.

(4) Be a Useful Source: Look at what they write, discover their current sources and what is useful about them. Determine what kind of information makes them look good, and give them that.

(5) Prioritize Your Efforts: Invest more in those for whom your strategies are working and for whom your resources are useful, even if they have smaller audiences.

This level of established trust can become a basis for the sustainable development of grassroots empowerment. The Millennium Development Goals will not work as long as the model for overcoming poverty is donor in control and recipient in compliance. A level of grassroots empowerment must be established. The grassroots empowerment must also be nurtured into viable social and economic systems, but it has to be grown internally by the community itself. The Mercy Corps is one organization taking on this type of work.

Mercy Corps - Be the Change

Mercy Corps focuses on working in countries in transition, where communities are struggling to recover from political or economic collapse, conflict or natural disaster. Experience has identified community-led and market-driven programs as the critical factor in helping communities sustainably rebuild and recover. Key to this approach is enabling communities to mobilize successfully for action.

Sustainability Field Study: Understanding What Promotes Lasting Change at the Community Level

This report reviews the research and contributes meaningful data to the longer term impact of community mobilization program.

SUSTAINABILITY FIELD STUDY
Understanding What Promotes
Lasting Change at the Community Level
December 2007
Preface

The results of this study confirm the design hypothesis: that a carefully managed process of community mobilization can both increase the sustainability of community development investments and contribute to shifting outlooks and behaviors of communities to be more open and self-sufficient in decision-making and problem-solving. When programs work collaboratively with well-intentioned but under-resourced local government representatives, prospects for sustainability become greater. To increase sustainability, development programs must seek out committed government representatives and invest in their capacity alongside informal community leaders, building an understanding of transparent, accountable and participative processes for engaging communities in their own development. Additionally, programs should reach out to youth to help expand their opportunities for income generation and foster tolerance and community commitment.

SUSTAINABILITY FIELD STUDY
Understanding What Promotes
Lasting Change at the Community Level
December 2007
IX. CONCLUSION

Collaboration Tools for the Millennium Development Goals.

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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.

Implications for Aid Practice - From the Citizen Perspective and The Global Perspective

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I have been having an ongoing discussion on leveraging social media on behalf of the Millennium Development Goals in one of the End POVERTY / Fim POBREZA forums. I am not claiming to be an expert in this area, just an interested participant. This blog is basically my ongoing personal attempt to marry Web 2.0 to global activism. Below are other online resources found in my web-trekking. They are very extensive and expansive resources so rather then trying to post fully about them here I am including then under Learning More About the Issues and Supporting Millenium Development Goals "In the Trenches".

Development Gateway Foundation and dgCommunities are sites created with professionals in mind, but they are also great educational resources, including the article Millennium Development Goals at Midpoint: Where do we Stand and Where do we Need to go?

The Development Gateway Foundation is an international nonprofit organization that provides Web-based platforms to make aid and development efforts more effective around the world.

It envisions a world in which the digital revolution serves people everywhere – creating greater opportunity through increased access to critical information; greater reliance on local capabilities; and more effective, better coordinated international aid.

dgCommunities is both a place to find knowledge resources focused on development issues and an interactive space where you can share your own work, participate in discussions, find people with similar interests and more. We have more than 36,000 members worldwide - and over half are in developing countries.

Web-Based Platforms for Effective Aid and Development

The foundation provides Web-based platforms for more effective aid and development efforts around the world focusing on three areas where even small investments in information and communications technology can make a major difference:

• Effective government – enabling better aid management and coordination, and more efficient and transparent government procurement.
• Knowledge sharing and collaboration – leveraging the Internet for online communications among development practitioners worldwide.
• Local partner programs in nearly 50 countries – connecting developing country organizations into a global network to empower them to use information and communications technologies to bolster local development efforts.

Areas of interest are the focus on Aid Effectiveness and Best Practices, which included the article that first brought me to this online resource, Implications for Aid Practice: Taking a citizen’s perspective (pdf).