Discussion Groups on how Volunteers can strengthen ICTs and ICTs can strengthen Volunteers
Date: 8 December 2003, 10h00 to 12h00
Moderator: Kenn Allen, Civil Society Consulting Group. LLC
Reporters: Randy Schmieder
Speakers:
- Luis Felipe Murray of Sociedade Iko Poran
- Pierre Carpentier (Afrique Initatives, people@net)
- Mohamed Ibrahim Cisse, Mayor of Timbuktu
- Arman Vermishyan of Internet Forum Environment Armenia
- Bill Gunyon, OneWorld Project Manager and Coordinator of the OneWorld Volunteer Editors
Participants divided into subgroups to focus on the most pressing concerns that involve volunteerism and ICTs and how to translate these into a specific Action Plan which can form a road-map for progress between now and the next phase of the WSIS (Tunis November 2005).
Questions discussed:
1) How can we strengthen the work of volunteers in making ICTs more accessible throughout the world?
2) How can we best use ICTs to strengthen volunteering?
Some of points arising from discussions included:
- Young people who spend a great deal of time on games and students looking for jobs in IT could be targeted for volunteering and could be a great resource.
- The Digital Solidarity Fund is potentially a good solution to help bridge the digital divide. Volunteers could be a key actor of the Fund. However, it is important to realize that volunteer programs do not come completely for free and require a budget, infrastructure, etc.
- Volunteers can be very useful in helping with basic literacy training, considering that literacy is a prerequisite to the use of ICTs.
- There are not many representatives of the open source community present in this conference, which indicates that links with the open source community need to be fostered.
- Open source software (Open Office, Linux, etc.) can easily be translated by volunteers. This can incite other software producers to expand their offer and increase language diversity. For example, before Open Office was translated into Norwegian, Microsoft Office did not exist in this language. Shortly after the publication of the Norwegian Open Office, Microsoft Office also became available in that language.
- Websites should be expanded to include case studies and good partnership examples (e.g. www.worldwidevolunteer.org).
- It is necessary for organizations to be open to new ways and methods of operation offered by ICTs.
- It is recommended to further develop tele-maintenance and content editing systems, which allow motivated volunteers to offer their time and skills from wherever they are.
- In a globalizing world where people and organizations are more and more connected, greater coordination between organizations is required.
- Volunteer effort represents a substantial potential for effective action. However, it is critical for partners to understand that volunteers do not equate to free labor. Volunteer contributions are always based on an exchange and voluntary organizations need financial support in order to set up volunteer programs.
- The net should be used to enable volunteers to work more closely with each other.
