Our series of interviews with the Featured Projects from the NetSquared Conference began last week with Dan Newman of MAPLight.org and Deron Beal of Freecycle.

We continue the series this week with Kim Lowery, the Co-Executive Director of Kabissa, an organization that helps African civil society organizations put information and communication technologies to work, for the benefit of the people they serve. Kabissa's project, Kabissa 2.0, was one of the Featured Projects at the NetSquared Conference in May 2007. You can listen to the interview and their five minute pitch on the NetSquared Podcast.

Kim Lowery: My name is Kim Lowery. I'm the Co-Executive Director of Kabissa. We work with a network of over 1,000 organizations in Africa, all nonprofit organizations. We work with them to help them integrate technology, and specifically the Internet, into what they do, better.

We provide website hosting services, training around technology, and also resources and news and events and opportunities, all around how to use technology in a nonprofit organization working in Africa.

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

KL: The original idea for Kabissa came from the founder, Tobias Eigen. He was doing some work in Nigeria with human rights organizations there. At that time, he was just hired as a consultant to work with the organizations, to set up Internet connections and email. This was back in '99, and even then, they wanted him to set up websites for them, and not just email.

And so, kind of on the fly, on his own personal server, he set up little mini-websites for them and trained them. At the conclusion of the projects, he was feeling pretty frustrated, because he was so inspired by the work these organizations were doing, but also knew, as a consultant, that he was kind of flying in and out, and he had a short-term relationship with these organizations, but he wanted it to be long-term.

So he set up Kabissa as a way for him to provide ongoing support and advice and services to nonprofit organizations working in Africa. It started with these 10 human rights organizations in Nigeria, and now we're in about 35 countries throughout Africa, and we have about 1,000 organizations working throughout Africa.

BB: Can you tell a story of how Kabissa has created positive change?

KL: Right now, we have one organization in particular that we have been speaking with, called Thembanathi. They're doing some really innovative combinations of doing good and social entrepreneurship, all with the technology support of Kabissa.

They are working with AIDS orphans in southern Africa, in South Africa in particular, in the KwaZulu-Natal region, and they're providing after-school services and mentoring and all sorts of support services to these orphans. As a way to make themselves sustainable, they have a group of local women in the area that are making jewelry, and then they sell their jewelry through their website that they host on Kabissa, which they get for free.

Through the reach of the Web, by having this local program in this one little area of southern Africa, they can have a really global impact in bringing people and supporters from all throughout the world to benefit this one small, local project, which we think is really great, and we're excited to be a part of that and help to make that happen.

BB: What is Kabissa 2.0?

KL: Kabissa 2.0 is a new initiative that we have to try and integrate more Web 2.0 technologies into what we're doing. We think the great promise of Web 2.0 is giving people a stronger voice on the Web, which has really been at the core of everything that we've been doing for the past seven, eight years. But these new technologies make that even more possible and more accessible to people.

The project that we had featured at the NetSquared Conference, which we'd entitled "Kabissa 2.0", was really about the intersection between Web 2.0 technologies and people, and face-to-face human contact.

What that project was about was setting up a network of 20, what we're calling Web 2.0 Ambassadors, in different countries in Africa that can really be the human connection between technology, which is often intimidating and scary for people and for organizations, and make that bridge between the human contact and technology, and take local examples of lessons learned and feed that back into the entire network, and also bring the lessons from the entire Kabissa network back down to the local level.

BB: What's the next step for Kabissa? What are its goals and challenges?

KL: Right now, we're doing a lot of work on some of the technology backbone of Kabissa 2.0. We are in the midst of creating a new website that will integrate a lot more Web 2.0 functionalities, such as some social networking features for our members and member directories, more blogging tools. We've already put our training materials into a wiki format, for people to update and access and edit.

And so we're in the midst of doing that technology backbone, but to get these Web 2.0 Ambassadors really on the ground, it's going to take a big shot of capital to get that network started. We think that they'll be, for the most part, self-sustaining, once they're up and running. But getting the money to get that network up and going, that is our biggest challenge right now.

BB: How will Kabissa 2.0 add value to Kabissa?

KL: I think what we're really excited about is creating a tipping point for the use of technology among nonprofits in Africa. From the famous book, The Tipping Point, there are three things that you need to really create a mass change, and one of them is a really large network, which we feel like we already have. We have this great network of 1,000 organizations who are already really into the idea of using technology in their organizations.

You need some expertise, and we've got the technology expertise, but then what we are lacking, oftentimes, is a really localized knowledge. And so adding in these Web 2.0 ambassadors would give us that localized knowledge, but also a local influence among local nonprofits, and we think that's a really powerful combination to really make mass change happen among African nonprofit organizations.

BB: What was the positive impact for Kabissa of taking Kabissa 2.0 to the NetSquared Conference? In particular, what connections to people or organizations or resources did you make that were beneficial?

KL: I think there are two main things that we really got out of it. First, was just the process leading up to it really made us think through our proposal and our project, in a lot of detail that we probably wouldn't have otherwise if we weren't going to be grilled by different experts from different sectors and so on. So I think that was a really valuable experience for us, just getting prepared for the conference.

And then, through the conference I think we got a lot of publicity and awareness, both among the people there, but also among our existing supporters. We got a lot of great feedback from people about the podcast of the five-minute pitch that we gave, a lot of great people we met at the conference who offered support and advice and help.

And as a result, even, just of making our project idea public, we've gotten encouragement and support and potential leads on funding, from people who weren't even at the conference. And so, I think it's really been a great boost to our visibility, among all sorts of different sectors.

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

KL: I think we're always looking for volunteer people to help. We're a very small organization, so extra manpower and hands and ideas are always welcome, so ideas on how we can make this happen and move it forward would be fantastic. And of course, what every nonprofit is looking for is more funding. And so, as I said, we really need that feed capital to get this network up and going off the ground, and anybody who has any ideas or sources of funds for that would be most welcome.

BB: Is there anything else you want people to know about Kabissa 2.0?

KL: We're really excited about it, and it is a part of this ongoing initiative to transform the work of Kabissa, but also then impacting the work of our members working in Africa who have the real solutions to on-the-ground problems, working in all sectors, from women's rights to HIV/AIDS to the environment.

And they're the ones doing the really important work, and we're just trying to do everything we can to amplify what they're doing and help them take their work to the next level as well.