We're continuing our series of interviews with the Featured Projects that attended the NetSquared Conference with a transcript of a podcast interview I did with Eduardo Bejar of Yankana.org this summer. You can hear the audio recording of the interview here and Yankana.org's 5-minute pitch at the Conference here.

Eduardo Bejar: Hi everyone, my name is Eduardo Bejar, I am the Executive Director of Fundapi.org which is a nonprofit foundation based in Guayaquil, Ecuador that works with information and communication technology projects for development to help people around here to get used to, and adopt technology tools and the Internet.

Our project is called Yankana. Yankana is a project that aims to provide nonprofit organizations located also in developing countries with ready-to-use social web tools and services. This will allow them to empower their daily activities by adopting these tools without the need for technical knowledge or sacrificing their limited resources in technology infrastructure. In addition we are creating an online nonprofit community platform where organizations will be able to work together and develop their own campaigns, so they can use technology as an ally for their work.

Britt Bravo: Where did the idea for Yankana come from?

EB: We were working on some small projects, like using the Google Maps API to provide a map of wireless spots in our city, and also hosting services and web development for local small organizations.

We thought that many of these great so-called "2.0" tools had the potential to benefit small organizations that currently are not online and that would like to use the services that the Internet provides for something more than email and instant messaging. Our idea is to help organizations by reducing the barriers involved in setting up these services so they can start using them without much hassle. At the time that we were working on planning this initiative and on starting its development, we read about the NetSquared Conference so we thought "Hey, this could be a good starting point." We sent a proposal and we got a chance to participate at the Conference.

BB: Can you tell a story or give an example of how Yankana can, or will create positive change?

EB: There are many ways that our project can create positive change. The first one is by increasing the number of organizations with an online presence in developing countries. Currently, if you want to find a nonprofit in a developing country, many times you can't find it, or you just find the big ones. There are many small ones that are not listed in those portals that usually list nonprofits, and even if they are listed, their information relies on what portal administrators input there. Sometimes it is not accurate.

So providing nonprofits a way to create their own content and even to publish their own news is a big help for them, in terms of collaboration and outreach. On the other hand, in Ecuador currently there is no way to know how many and which nonprofits are working in a certain area, not even the government knows. So our community portal aims precisely to create this database so you will be able to know how you can help an organization that is working in a specific area in countries like ours.

BB: What is the next step for Yankana? What are its goals and challenges?

EB: Currently we are still finishing the platform and setting up the service, we have had some issues because we have limited resources so we are not moving as fast as we'd like. Nevertheless it's something we are developing and we hope it will be online in the next weeks. Our biggest challenge right now is funding, our organization is self-supported, which makes it a bit harder to develop interesting projects like this. On the other hand we started to develop local meetings, Net Tuesdays and we've had a great response. This gives us a way to teach other organizations what to do with Web 2.0 and helps us to build a local nonprofit community and get feedback on what organizations are expecting regarding social web tools and services.

BB: What was the positive impact for Yankana of going to the NetSquared conference?

EB: The NetSquared Conference, for us, was certainly great. It was a unique opportunity, so being there had an enormous positive impact for our organization. We met very interesting people and made great contacts. We learned a lot and found out that we are not so different from organizations that work in bigger communities in other parts of the world, like in the US and Europe. Perhaps the only difference that is somehow a barrier for us is that we are not US-based, and for donations it seems that a 501c3 status gives you more opportunities to access resources, but in the end this was a great experience.

Currently I'm writing an article that a network asked me to write about how the NetSquared experience was. It certainly was a great experience, we are still talking with new people, making new contacts. We hope we can collaborate with some of them in the future.

BB: How can listeners help to move your work forward?

EB: We certainly require all the support that we can have. If you are listening to this podcast or are reading this transcript, you can help us by donating some time, if you have some time available to do some coding, mainly CMS customization, or if you have some funding that you would like to put to work in a developing country like ours in a project that will certainly help many other organizations. Or even if you have hardware, or some servers that you are not using, or that you are replacing with new ones, please let us know. We'll be glad to give you more information about our organization, our project and our specific needs. Our organization website is Fundapi.org and our project's website is Yankana.org. We've heard something about fiscal agents, or something that can help organizations that do not have a 501c3 status, but we haven't found much information about that. If that is something that can help organizations outside the US access donations, it will certainly be of great help.

BB: Is there anything else you want people to know about Yankana?

EB: Well, we're an organization that is working on projects to help local citizens and local organizations to adopt technologies. We are currently working also on e-learning projects that will help people that are not in Ecuador's main cities access education and courses. That's what we are working on right now, in addition to Yankana. We hope that in the near future you'll hear more about us and we're glad if we can work together with many of you in the near future.