Building Responsible Citizens Through ICT
Requested amount from Knight News Challenge:
$360,000Total cost of project including all sources of funding:
$610,000Expected amount of time to complete project:
six monthsBuilding Responsible Citizens Through ICT Project is meant to have a community of volunteer reporters who would be able to track hate messages and report back for faster action be it, from sms, online, radio to a social network where people would have opportunities to discuss those messages in an open manner with a view of correcting ourselves. Its known that ICT provide great opportunities for breaking down isolation, alienation and discrimination in community and this project intend to do that. The aim here is to train community members’ basic blogging and journalistic skills to be able to track and report such abuses to our virtual and interactive newsrooms. Such social networking plays important role in harmonizing our different cultures and bringing people together in terms of new ideas, suggestions and minimizing tensions as well as nipping in good time tensions before they boil over.
The project, Web 2.0 will provide people from all walks of life to socially engage with each other. It will combine traditional media reporting with the latest technological reporting that involves interactive (sms), sharing of photos, videos and podcast. The project will focus on building online communities of people who share common interests and are interested in exploring the interests and activities of others bearing in mind that the world has become a one small village where everyone is affected by the happening of other places however remote they may seem to be.
The project will incorporate Kiswahili and English which are official and National Languages in Kenya. This is intended for wider audience who does not understand English. The project will incorporate various community based organizations as a way of sharing and learning from each other.
0 commentsHow will your project improve the way news and information are delivered to geographic communities?
Building Responsible Citizens Through ICT Project
For along time, Kenya has yet to have a social media developed specifically for their needs- that allows people to engage with other community members by sharing ideas and problems and coming up with solutions to some of those problems they face. Traditionally people have relied on newspapers, radios, televisions, text messages with little or no way of sharing these ideas with other people- making communication to be only for two people some of which might not be true. This project is going to change all that. Its going to allow people to interact on a real time basis where issues that can be dealt with as it comes allowed festering into a time bomb which could have been nipped on the bud was there to be another source of information sharing. It will allow users to upload videos, podcasts and pictures, and share them on the web. We know that Internet-based communities have emerged as a powerful vehicle for young people to change the destiny of their communities by sharing knowledge, exchanging ideas, and organizing community-based initiatives.
0 commentsHow is your idea innovative? (New or different from what already exists.)
Building Responsible Citizens Through ICT
For along time, many young people have relied on words from mouth, TV & Radio that at times exaggerate the news and do not give people alternative to share their ideas/ views with the rest of the population. This idea is innovative in the sense that for the first time, Kenyans are going a social networking place where people are going to deal with issues on the real time basis as it happens. People would be able to upload videos, podcasts and pictures online ,chat online, send text messages, give advice, counseling and support by other network members which is not only cheaper , but would readily be accessible to majority of Kenyans. It’s well known fact that most of misunderstandings among human beings come a result of culture gap-culture clash and an idea gap. This idea is innovative in the sense that it’s going to bridge all these gaps making it possible for people to talk about these issues. Had we had this kind of network, many of what happened immediately after the election of 2007 was announced could have been minimal as people could have had opportunity to talk about this issues online and share some of the video and pictures on what was happening at that time, and this could have wakened the people up to the reality at that time.
0 commentsWhat experience do you or your organization have to successfully develop this project?
Building Responsible Citizens Through ICT
During Kenya’s 2007 General Election, SIDAREC Community radio station, Ghetto 99.9 FM played key role in enabling the community to remain united as it provided community members with an avenue to channel those issues they felt strongly about in an open manner. Through text messages, phone call-ins, people were able to discuss freely and understand those issues that divide and unite them as a community. This explains why Pumwani, a slum of over 650,000 people were never affected by the post election violence. Everything that was happening was foreign to this community, yet it had some of the worst hit neighborhoods. As a result of this experience and bearing in mind what dialogue can achieve, we would want to not only replicate, but have a project where every Kenyan would be able to dialogue with one another to avoid the consequences of wars and mistrust.
SIDAREC is also working with Architecture for Humanity and Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), to put up Technology & Media Lab in Nairobi for this purpose. Architecture for Humanity and AMD are collaborating with SIDAREC on this project because of our past work with Community Knowledge Centres where youth come to blog, dialogue, and exchange ideas with their counterparts in other countries through social networking. The purpose of Media Lab and Library will be used to teach computer skills, including web & graphic design skills, online facilitation (blogging); it will also have recording facilities for the youth radio station.
Lastly, my organization is the only youth based and found organization in Kenya to use KOHA software in managing her library. Not many institutions of higher learning in Kenya have an online library managing system. We manage our books in the library online- from acquisition to borrowing to membership.
The goal of this initiative are to help SIDAREC develop and expand its technology based educational programs, connect people from poor neighborhoods and to demonstrate that facility design is a vital element of the development of technology initiatives around the world. The aim of this initiative is to provide high speed internet connectivity to the slums poor in such a way to provide a variety ways for users to interact using e-mail, instant messaging, and phone call services and at the same time share videos and pictures.
0 comments
