Worlds Touch

Community Technology Centers in High Point and Darjeeling

Administrator Radha Karky of Hayden Hall, Darjeeling, India with a woven box, hand-crafted by the women's cooperative.

"I want a computer center for the after-school children," said Radha Karky at Hayden Hall, the woman-empowering NGO in Darjeeling, India. She could already see the monitors set up down there, but that's as far as her vision went. Where to get staffing, funding, curriculum, networking, hardware, software...these questions blur in the everpresent fog that swirls incessantly in that mountainside city.

As Cultural Ambassadorial Scholar for Rotary International, I volunteered for four months at Hayden Hall, doing social enterprise work on Fair Trade standards with their handicrafts store, adding a handicrafts brochure to their simple but effective web site, and generally pitching technology as one way to more effectively achieve the organization's goals.

"Can someone point me to information about equipping and budgeting a computer center?" I asked on the international tech advisors list.

I got only one response: http://www.telecentre.org/

I think this site is going to be helpful one of these days, but for now the material is not particularly well-presented and it took about four tries before I found the resources I was looking for. Google was more helpful.

But here's what I found:

America's CTCNet is the best all-around site for accessing information about anything you want to know about telecenters. Their Start-Up Manual promises to be my constant companion and tech bible for the next few months.

Here's the blurb: "First published in 1997, the CTC Center Start-Up Manual is widely recognized as a principal guide for establishing CTCs and serves as an organized patchwork of CTC experiences. Toni Stone, founder of CTCNet, was principal author of previous editions of the Manual. With support from the Surdna Foundation, the manual was updated in January 2003 to reflect developing CTC experiences and needs."

For staffing, the CTC Vista Project looks like a dream come true, IF the organization in question is in America AND has an extra $5,000 for program fees available. This is a full-time staff position for a year, though, so it is rock-bottom cheap for a tech-knowledgeable worker.

Da Blurb: "The CTC VISTA Project places Americorps*VISTA members with non-profit organizations across the country that utilize information and communications technologies  to address the needs to low-income and at-risk communities.

CTC VISTA members work to build the capacity of the individual organizations where they serve and collaborate with other VISTAs on the development of resources, trainings, and related projects. Through their work the Project endeavors to build a network that facilitates collaboration, support, and the sharing of ideas among a diverse group of participating organizations."

In the Telecentre.Org library section, I found this gem:

Commonwealth of Learning Telecentres: Case studies and key issues

Here's the blurb, but it doesn't do this incredibly valuable book justice: "The book opens with a global overview of the multipurpose community telecentre movement and discusses the key issues of ownership, management, operational models and sustainability. There follows a series of case studies of telecentres drawn from Europe, North and South America, Africa, Asia and Australia. The final chapters draw on the experiences, insights and findings of some of the world's leading experts in telecentres in regard to evaluation, teleworking, training telecentre managers and staff, and selecting and using technology."

I just finished a grant proposal to Progressive Technology Project's latest round of funding, requesting money to set up a telecenter here in High Point for a neighborhood community center in a low-income and blue-collar neighborhood. Progressive Tech was the first nonprofit technology outfit I found when I first began looking for like-minded souls after my first trip to Nepal and my first nonprofit tech project there. Their From Exclusion to Inclusion, a report on how grass-roots community organizing groups use technology blew me away. It's not an understatement to say that paper changed my life.

Progressive Tech wants to know how we're going to evaluate the results of our telecenter. CTCNet a fabulous powerpoint presentation on the topic of "Logic Models," and designing and building-in program evaluation. The people at Innovation Network, where I did some beta testing a while back, talk about "logic models" in their approach to program evaluation.

It never ceases to amaze me that three of the least considered ideas in technology are:

1. An org should invest more in training and staffing and maintenance than in software and hardware.

2. No technology project should go live until it has been thoroughly user-tested, with enough TIME to fix the problems that come up.

3. No technology project should start without an evaluation component built in.

The grant proposal is submitted, today, after an entirely sleepless night, and now we wait. But even if we don't get the grant, I have enough information now to take back to Radha and the other decision-makers at Hayden Hall. If they agree to hire me to help them plan and execute their computer center, it will be much easier to raise the money for the airfare to get back there!

Google and Blogger and Worlds Touch!

I've created a Google calendar for Worlds Touch meetings, events, functions and voyages. But the Google url is too long and ugly, so I made a blogger blog on which I've posted the calendar. So all my friends, supporters, donors, volunteers and family members can see what Worlds Touch is up to at a simple address:

http://worldstouch.blogspot.com

If you have a google calendar, you can post events from my calendar to yours and I can post events from yours to mine. I can invite you to an event or meeting, and you can reply. You can comment on my events, get directions, ask questions. And get a reminder the day before a shared event happens.

I was working with the Rotary Club of Darjeeling on this concept and found it worked quite well, as long as you put the calendar in a post to the blog and that's all there is. From another blog, you can link to your calendar site.

Business Model and its Ramifications

When I began thinking about being back in the States, I knew I would have to confront the issue of Worlds Touch's business model. The Johnny Appleseed of Technology isn't going to work, as I'm sure I was the only one not to realize. We have the very tough problem of selling to the generous donors of this world a very unsexy service. Many of our potential patrons are technophobic...heck my very own daughter is technophobic.

At the very best, technology is something sort of added on, a seeming frill. I mean, why donate computers when you can donate a school? or a live goat? or medicine? So what can I do to create a business that can go to Nepal and India, Cambodia and even Africa? David, my board chairman, was amazed when he went to Cambodia and learned that almost all the NGOs there live from grants, without a hope or plan for self-sufficiency.

Here, on the other hand, sustainability is all about getting individuals who believe in your work, who are passionate about your cause, and are willing to invest their own dollars to help your mission succeed. Bridge the Digital Divide! Close the technology gap? I've seen some great slogans, as we all struggle with how to position ourselves: Helping your organization save the world. Helping you help others.

So I've decided that the only way to make this outfit viable is to do local projects that fit the Worlds Touch mission--poverty work, saving the environment and creating a world where handicapped people have a place. My husband doesn't like the word "poverty." It's so negative. That's okay. I'll never forget the day I sat up on the platform during a meeting of the savings-credit cooperative in Nepal and the president of the group, herself a member of one of the groups, saying, "We used to be poor women. But now, with 8 million rupees in the bank, we aren't poor women any more."

I like the idea of actually rising out of poverty. Of providing organizations that are working for that, aiming for that, one way to make that happen.

All this said, I'm still looking for ways to fund this organization. One idea is to apply for the Progressive Tech grant of $10,000, partnering with the West End Ministries and West End Neighborhood Association.  They have a forward-looking guy at the head of the organization, Don, a fellow who used to work for DuPont, and now in retirement has become a minister and community organizer and social activist. They'd like to have a community technology center, where the kids could learn some computer skills, and the old people could come in for lessons in how to do email. They've got three computers already set up, on computer desks that *I* am envious of. They have bit off a nice big chunk, and have no idea how they are going to proceed with it.

I'd like to work on that project because Hayden Hall, in Darjeeling, wants to set up a computer center too, and if I can get this one off the ground, then I will have the experience under my belt to work on the one in India. And Nar, my Nepali board member, wants to set up some kind of computer center in the schools he went to back in the villages of the Terai.

And today I stumbled across all sorts of interesting reading on Community Tech Centers, CTCNet, www.telecenters.org, and a couple of important documents that will guide my footsteps in the months and weeks to come.

Other ideas: Online auction, using the great stuff I find at yard sales. The great flea market auction of wonderful, very picky stuff. Kim, one of my donors, has a collection of red glass to die for. I've got exquisite hand-embroidered tablecloths. And we can ask for travel and dinners in restaurants and stuff like that. I could see this as a major fund-raiser, and nobody so far in the community is doing it. It also makes sense that we do it, since we are the technology people.

I also am fascinated by the explosion of videos on the internet. At the moment, they are outside the scope of my clients in the developing world. But for my locals, why not do digital storytelling? There is a whole wide world of communication. I went to "webinars" on both these topics last week. Nothing earthshatteringly new. But all of it destined for my bulging toolkit of free or inexpensive technology solutions for grass-roots organizations.

I've been an advocate of the frugal path all my life. I'm still on it, except now I'm on the digital highway.

Playing with the ChipIn Widget

I'm experimenting with the look and feel of a widget (which is a new buzzword for a cute little web thingy that you can add to a site) from ChipIn. This one lets you set a monetary goal you'd like to reach, and people who believe in what you're doing can click the button and you go to a web site where you can donate.

I haven't yet tried donating, but I will. I set one up for Worlds Touch, but I haven't promoted it. I am still deciding if I like it or not. I'll be interested in anybody's first impressions. It would live, if I choose to use it, in the sidebar here.

I'm thinking of ways I might want to put more content on this blog. My problem has always been that I like my livejournal community and tend to post there first. I know people do come to this blog, but I rarely get comments and we don't have the same friends list here that we have at LJ, so it's harder to build community. But it may be something I need to work on.

Here's the direct link to a web page at Chip In that I created really really easily:
http://worldstouch.chipin.com/worlds-touch

Combatting Fear from the Internet

There is enough fear floating rather free-form around us from real life. We don't need to get any more than necessary from the internet.

This happened today in Real Life:
Sitting in the cafe at Barnes & Nobles today with one of my writer-friends, I looked up to see a situation: A man sat at the next table, his keys and wallet on the table in front of him, actually out near the aisle-end of the table. In front of his table stood a fellow in a backward baseball cap, a fleshy overbelly, jeans and a t-shirt and a plastic shopping bag with some kind of pillow? cloth bag? sticking out the top. The fellow standing there was eying the keys and wallet.

I said to the guy obliviously reading his paper, loud enough for the starer to hear: "Do you know this guy? He's looking at your wallet."

He reached for his wallet and the staring fellow simply walked off. Then my writer-friend told a story about one of HER friends who had been so deep in chat with a buddy, she neglected to notice that someone had taken her keys, which were--like the keys of the fellow sitting next to me--on the table in front of her. Someone took her Lexus, too, and it was found three weeks later. The guy who had taken it, "just wanted to drive a Lexus."

The fellow at Barnes & Nobles seemed a bit miffed to hear about theft at his favorite coffee shop, and got up stiffly and left. (Though perhaps he was leaving anyway?)

And that led to this email situation:
Later this morning, I got an email, vaguely familiar...had I already gotten this one? from this writer-friend about a serial killer in Louisiana. I looked it up at Snopes and found that while they HAD had a serial killer in that area, he didn't operate THAT way. This was an urban legend of danger and fear.

I am the only person I know who, as a matter of routine, checks every virus warning and urban-legend-like message I get. I don't send them on to my address book unless I've verified that they are both genuine and accurate. You might want to do the same--at least verifying the accuracy. Fear is all over this country (and many other countries I've visited, by the way), and while we need to keep our antennae up for potential problems, like the one in Barnes & Nobles today, we also need to dismiss fear-mongering as much as possible.

Here's the Norton virus warning site I use.

Fund Raising Triumphs!

In the past couple of weeks, Worlds Touch has received donations of $1,100! One of the donations is earmarked for a health camp in Darjeeling, supervised by the Rotary Club there. I'm only hoping that I'll have raised enough here for my plane ticket back to Darjeeling in time to participate, as I did last September, in the camp.

We are working hard to bring Worlds Touch to a solid financial footing this year. We've done some amazing work on practically no money, but it's time to grow up and get paid for our work. We need an LCD projector and some other computer equipment. We need an office worker. We need regular local income to pay for our overseas travel. Our partners overseas will be paying fees for our services, but it won't be enough to get us there. An airplane ticket represents six months of a regular high school teacher's salary there.

I hope we will have our annual Nepali purse sale for Christmas this year. My supplier in Nepal may be caught up in political events there because I haven't heard from her.

But this is the ongoing challenge of being a nonprofit organization. We will meet and triumph!

Videos for Web Sites

Yesterday, I got an email from my board member Scott in Texas, sending me to a video entitled "Only in India" on the Google Video site. It was shot from some upstairs window down at a traffic intersection. Click here to see it.

I submit that that traffic is NOT only in India. What an ethnocentric view! I've posted a CAMBODIAN view, from street level of the same phenomenon. I tried to upload it to livejournal, but so far they haven't perfected the communications with google...so I posted to my photo blog, here.

We have some very sweet videos from the trip, taken with JF's Canon digital camera. Nothing artistically advanced. Just moving pictures when sometimes ya gotta see the moves to appreciate what's happening. As is the case with traffic!

But I really like this google videos thing. I heard they bought out YouTube. And my conscientious social justice techies are going with a service called "revver" which I will check out. It looks like I might inherit JF's camera sometime soon, as he bought a new, better, bigger, more professional one for himself upon return from his trip. That fits into "boys and their toys" category, I think. He also got a new computer, printer/copier...a new office, what. While I, the nonprofit technology consultant, can't find a mouse in the house that works on my computer! Grrrr.

Of course, videos are a Western luxury still. They are too fat for my friends in India to download from the internet. But there is a whole world of nonprofit video glory here. To be explored and loved. And to help us raise money! Yay, fund raising.

Meeting the Needs of Nonprofits

I went to a lecture tonight by Drew Dolan, a professor at Southern Illinois University, on "Meeting the Needs of Nonprofit Organizations in the 20th Century."

God, I'm glad I'm not in school. I took notes. I like taking notes, but the man had just right up next to nothing to say. "We need to understand what nonprofits need." Yeeeaaahhh...true....

He did say one thing that interested me (in answer to my question, actually.) What is the difference between a leader and an administrator? A leader is doing the right things, while an administrator is doing things the right way. The leader is concerned with vision and mission and the administrator is concerned with goals and objectives.

The rest? Nothing I need to know.

Nonprofits are not really like business organizations and not like government organizations. Yep.
We can break them down into sectors: Arts, Education, Environmental, Health, Human Services, International (that's mostly Worlds Touch), Religious, and Public and Societal Benefit. Okay, that makes sense.

We can look at them in different ways, like how much education the executive directors have, or how long they've been in business. Okay, I'm yawning. I'm thirsty.

If you ask nonprofits what THEY need, they'll tell you courses in fund raising and grant writing. And if you take THOSE two out of the mix, they want to learn about volunteer administration, planning, cooperative ventures, communication, computers, accounting, and program evaluation. And they want to learn all this in half-day seminars. And 51 per cent of all nonprofits do their training for this stuff "in-house."

I took a fund raising course from High Point University  the summer of 2005, and learned a whole lot about how nonprofits go about getting the money they need to operate. Could I go right out and raise a year's worth of operating costs for Worlds Touch? Nope. But at least I know what I SHOULD be doing.