This is Rebekah kicking off the note-taking from the first round of project intro presentations at N2Y2. I’ll try to capture the essence of the presentations. My apologies for any gaps.

Daniel Ben-Horin, founder of CompuMentor, told us that the organizing value that trumped all others in putting together this conference was creating a level playing field. In true form then, the order of these projects intros was determined on the spot by drawing their names from a hat. A representative from each project was given 5 minutes to present the project. Here they are:

Nabuur
Siegfried from Nabuur (“neighbor”) tells the story of a Rwandan villager who posted the needs of his village on Nabuur.com. It was too dry; they needed more water for the crops. People from all over the world responded, telling how irrigation can be done differently. Now production is up in that village: more water, better food production. “We are now in charge of our future.” Nabuur enlarged their problem-solving capability.

We are all neighbors in the global village. Is Nabuur a fundraising tool? Avolunteer matching tool? No. It’s about joint problem solving. Jointly finding solutions to local problems. Harnesses global knowledge to empower local communities.

900 volunteers have signed up. Processes are in place, a staff is in place. Nabuur has been receiving recognition: UN, Google (free adverts), Clinton invited Siegfried to his home. (Siegfried left WWF to start Nabuur).

“We need to tap into the power of the individual to make things happen.” 140 communities signed up, want to increase to 10,000. That can only happen with the help of people like those in the NetSquared community.

Check out the notecards Nabuur distributed to each table. Each lists a way to help. If you can provide the help, sign up and turn in the card, or pass the card to someone with the expertise they need.

Stop Family Violence
Irene described her vision for an online political action org working to stop family violence in US. She started 7 yrs ago in upstate NY. Had been working for local org. Needed to lobby congress to renew federal family violence legislation and funding. Started an advocacy website and got hundreds of thousands of messages sent to Congress, and the legislation was passed. Hooray!

Referring to the MS ad campaign some years back, Irene asked, Where do you want to go today? For 100s of thousands of women and children, the answer is, Someplace safe. There’s no portal site to access those safe places. We need to get those local programs online. Feed info to local sites and push local info out to national portal for more exposure. Networking for survivors, finding their collective power. Really innovative part is to take activism tools to give power to these people who need them. Need open source product to do this.

Genocide Intervention Network
People are not destined to fight. People are providing heroic humanitarian aide efforts. But it’s up to all of us to change the conditions that necessitate the need for humanitarian relief.

GIN gives members a more lasting voice, a more permanent and enduring solution. The vision is to make genocide unthinkable, impossible. Empower our members to stop genocide. Not another bumper sticker or petition. Activists need resources. Public domain images, statistics, information, tools to mix it around, tools to become local leaders. GIN wants to integrate with existing tools, networks, and resources. No membership requirements. Goal is to build out the anti-genocide movement with tools to make their work more effective. Give them the tools and get out of the way. Allow activists to speak with their own voices.

Miro: Open Source Video
Miro focuses on changing the way media work in this country to address the quality of the mass media. Democracy requires good quality media. Disastrous decisions have been made because of the kind of coverage issues receive in our closed media world. We need a radical re-understanding of how media can work. Online media is currently a closed, proprietary system. Miro’s answer is an open source, open standards system that puts the user at the center of the aggregation. As the media move online, this space is being defined right now over the next few years. An open system needs to be defined now.

Benefits: publishers can publish any way they want rather than being restricted by the current broadcast system. Nonprofits can use the unique power of video to connect their communities/constituents.

Miro is up against massive companies. Moving out of beta. Goal is in sight. Need our support.

Maps 2.0
Greg Swanson of Maps 2.0 offers GIS to save lives. He told the story of health care volunteers serving a remote mountain village in Afghanistan. Only the helicopter pilot knew where they had been. The volunteers and their interpreter had no way of communicating with the pilot, and the names of locations on the maps were only in Russian. There was no way to report where they had provided their services. Need a GIS service to help such NPOs.

Problem: How can npos and humanitarian orgs find out which GIS services are suitable for their work? There’s no info desk to sort out the options.

Vision: positive social impact—multiplier, can be used across many causes (health, environment, etc). Break down the technology barriers to make the power of GIS understandable and accessible to NPOs.

Youth Assets
Youth Assets believes that youth much be included as active partners in addressing the local challenges of Sub-Saharan African orphans. 10% of households there are headed by a child. These youth have a wealth of local knowledge and understanding. They need unfettered access to additional knowledge and resources. Youth Assets will provide a
knowledge hub with 20 critical assets (such as clean water, location of nearest school, childcare, etc). Access to network of info from local service providers. Maps of services. Mobile technologies are accessible (costs are dropping). The remaining questions is how will we use them? IT can end the isolation of individual poor people by bringing them together, providing access to resources, and harnessing their vital local knowledge.