BENIN – the country – la pays

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Last week I was at the Embassy in Berlin …

… to receive my visa for Benin. Bea, a friend of mine, was with me. We really had a lot of fun there … here we are saluting Benin’s current president.

FRENCH VERSION

La semaine dernière je suis allée à l’ambassade du Bénin; pour chercher mon visa pour le Bénin. Bea, une amie, était avecmoi. Nous nous sommes beaucoup amusées ici ; sur la foto nous saluonsle président actuel du Bénin.

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mission statement 2009 – déclaration de mission 2009

WE support people in Benin

WE Magazine sends a small group of volunteers to help people in Benin, Africa. WE bring them used laptops & mobiles as tools for information, education, participation, and finally, a self-promoted, bottom-up democracy. Along the tech WE deliver the knowledge in workshops: how to get helpful information for improving the life of the individual. Our group does not include trained development workers, rather we´re engaged web aficionados with a cause.

WE will start our work at a „SOS Kinderdorf“, but aim to get our equipment and training to more abandoned areas of the country. Once on the ground, we´ll start to build a network of educators and “makers” to learn more about what is necessary and how we can help with our talents, networks, technology. As often as infrastructure allows us to, we will communicate about the situation in Benin through social media like twitter, facebook, blogs, videos, streams etc.

Back with the learnings from Benin, we aim to build a sustainable network of supporters that scale our project up: companies to make Benin their CSR project, European universities and schools to share knowledge, media to make aware of the situation and demand.

But to get going, WE first of all need YOU:

1. Send your used laptops and mobiles to Ulrike Reinhard or Alexander Rausch (About us).
2. Donate – we need to raise a minimum of 5.000 Euros for travelling and accomodation.
3. Spread our story in your own networks.

Thanks for supporting kids in Benin.

WE are the web.

WE can help.

NOUS soutenons des enfants au Bénin

WE Magazine envoie un petit groupe de volontaires pour aider les gens au Bénin, l’Afrique. NOUS leur apportons des portables utilisés & des téléphones mobile comme les outils pour les renseignements, l’éducation, la participation et finalement, un promu de soi, cul sec la démocratie.

Le long d’institut d’enseignement technique NOUS livrons la connaissance aux ateliers: Comment obtenir l’information utile pour améliorer la vie de l’individu? Notre groupe n’inclut pas d’ouvriers de développement formés, plutôt nous sommes des passionnés de web retenus avec une cause.

NOUS commencerons notre travail à un “S.O.S. Kinderdorf“, mais aurons l’intention de recevoir notre équipement et entraînement aux autres régions de Benin. Une fois sur la terre,

nous commencerons à construire un réseau de NGOs, éducateurs et décideurs politiques pour apprendre qu’il faut faire et comment nous pouvons aider avec nos talents, réseaux, technologie.
Aussi souvent que l’infrastructure nous permet à, nous communiquerons de la situation au Bénin par les média sociaux comme le Twitter, Facebook, les blogs, les vidéos etc.

En arrière avec l’apprend du Bénin, nous avons l’intention de construire un réseau durable de partisans qui augmentent notre projet: les compagnies pour rendre le Bénin leur projet de CSR, les NGOs pour ajouter le Bénin à leur portefeuille, universités européennes et écoles pour partager la connaissance, les média pour faire conscient de la situation et de la demande.

Mais recevoir le départ, NOUS avons besoin tout d’abord de VOUS:

1. Envoyez vos portables utilisés et téléphones mobile à Ulrike Reinhard ou Alexander Rausch (Sur nous).
2. Donnez – nous avons besoin de lever un minimum de 5.000 euros pour les voyages et accomodation.
3. Étendez notre histoire dans vos propres réseaux merci de soutenir des enfants au Bénin.

Merci de votre soutien aux enfants en Bénin.

NOUS sommes le web.

NOUS pouvons aider.

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Africa: Internet, Open Source Community, First African Bloggers Conference Kenia

Today, I found an interesting articel about the ICT situation in africa. You can see – comparing to all other continents of the world – that there is a big necessity to enable more net affiliations in africa.

Source: Heise/Telepolis, Soenke Zele, Link

Open Source Software Community in Kenia

I also found this Video from Alex Gakuru: the first-ever FOSS video in Kenya! It is a result of an Open, voluntary collab among local Free and Open Source Software community of advocates, users, and developers with appreciated participation by Eunice Kariuki – senior Kenya ICT Board representative.

FOSS Video – Kenya (version 0.9) from Alex Gakuru on Vimeo.

Source: Heise/Telepolis, Link

The African Bloggers Conference (Nairobi, Kenia)

At least I found out that there is the first African Bloggers Conference in Nairobi from August 16 – 18 in 2009 called Kelele! (Kelele means “Noise” in Kiswahili). People who believe that the internet can give voice back to african people will meet for the first time and make noise. I think it’s a great idea to use the principles of web2.0 conferences (everyone, everywhere) in africa and I look forward what will happen there.

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afrikacamp – more details

The afrikacamp took place in the W@lz, a private school in the 14th district of Vienna/Austria. The building is rather simple but modern equipped with a very warm athmosphere.

Around 25 to 30 participants were visiting this barcamp, either interested in the kind of conferencing (i.e. barcamp), or in the topic Africa itself.

A lot of people already familiar with NGO’s or with experiences travelling around in Africa met people from the field of  IT, business, new media, HCI, as well as aethics and sociology. Visitors from Sweden, India, Africa, Australia came as well. It was a nice day to exchange topics of interest, experiences and information concerning the help of developing countries. Worth to mention is that all the participants got breakfast and lunch.

In two different rooms paralel sessions were conducted. Different questions like “production of UGC in Africa” or “Clean IT”, as well as “it 4 D – IT for development” were addressed.

For our purpose I held a session called “WE benin” in which I had a nice talk about how to do fund raising, what to think about if one is taking hardware from Europe to Benin, and about cooperation works with locals.

Beneath this great input I had some further nice and useful talks in other sessions and coffee breaks concerning our vision and idea to support Benin.

After this meet in Vienna I am quite curious to take a step further.

CU, Sara

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