Terrific chatting today with Pam, Jeff, Derek, Juliet, James, and John, and hope we can speak more as well as collaborate in future! Wish we could have spoken directly with more folks in Africa, but timing and technology seemed not to work in our favor.

Sylvie Siyam (http://www.protegeqv.org/team.html) of Protege QV in Cameroon, a 2004 GLD participant and recipient of a grant from The Commonwealth of Learning (for her organization), tried to access the chat room but was not able to get in, and a number of others were travelling and sent enthusiasm with regrets that they could not attend.

I have written already to everyone to get them excited about same time next year, and to start planning early how we might participate with more numbers, and how we might extend the learning experience both out into our communities and daily lives, as well as cycle this back to GLD.

Some great news from the ICTs perspective is that the members of GRASSUP NOW–a project sponsored by the Commonwealth of Learning (which has been an invaluable partner and friend for us during the past 3 years), bringing together 5 nonprofits in an e-learning consortium in W. Kenya–were not able to attend GLD this year, because they were at a telecenter conference in Uganda, hosted by Telecentre.org. Telecentre.org (http://www.telecentre.org)is hoping to create networks of telecenter operators and users in the near future, in Africa and perhaps elsewhere. Hopefully we will have them here next year, to tell us all about this aspect of their work, and other ongoing activities.

I wanted to leave information here about GRASSUP NOW and KAIPPG’s GenARDIS project (KAIPPG being the HIV/AIDS and development nonprofit in Kenya whose international branch I run in the USA, at http://www.kaippg.org), both of whom have e-learning and ICTs as their centerpiece. Both are exciting projects which are not only generating e-content, but might serve as models for how to go about integrating ICTs and e-learning into development activities and the programs of organizations at the grassroots (especially small nonprofits).

One exciting aspect of both initiatives is that they are becoming more and more interactive, with materials (content) being created by the end-users themselves, and then disseminated via radio, mobile phones, film/video and photography, cassettes and CD-ROMs, and art forms such as song and theater which are recorded for wider distribution. People who are receiving initial training to do so are eager and engaged to pass along this knowledge, so more and more individuals, groups, and communities are being drawn into this activity, thus extending the reach and efficacy of e-learning.

For more on these programs, see urls:

GRASSUP NOW (stands for “Grassroots Socio-economic Underpinnings: Poverty reduction, Nutritional improvements, ODL/ICTs, Women”, as these are the subject areas covered)

http://www.stockholmchallenge.se/projectdata.asp?id=1&projectid=475
http://www.onevillagefoundation.org/ovf/projects/ovf_kenya/grassup.html

GenARDIS:

http://www.cta.int/about/genardis.htm http://ictupdate.cta.int/index.php/article/articleview/374/1/69

WOW, what a fabulous intro!! If emails could blush, this one would be red, haha!! I will hope to get more pix and info for people to see in the next few days (came in quite late this year…my apologies), and in any case, will so much look forward to talking with everyone next weekend!!!

GLD is one of my favorite events of all time: I love the discussions, the people and organizations involved, the ideas, visions, dreams, projects…and the Skipper too!

Greatest thanks again to John and All, and Yours in Sailing Spirit! Janet