We recently announced the 5 Winners for the FACT Social Justice Challenge and we are thrilled at the caliber and impact of all the Projects. As such, we want to give you a closer look at these collaborative technology Projects and the people behind them. Each Monday in the month of November, we'll be posting an interview from one of the Winning Projects using the fact interviews tag - we hope you'll follow along!

This spring has brought 9 new NetSquared Local groups, bringing the new official number to 67 groups worldwide! Below is a list of the groups that have started in the last few months.

Collegiate Women Walk Together Nationwide to Bring Clean Drinking Water to African Families

Hundreds of Students from 11 College Campuses to Host BH2O+ Clean Water Awareness Events

NABUUR woke up today to some heartening news from the project in Kabondo, Kenya.

Here's Eric Ochanji, local representative of Kabondo, to share with you the exciting news.

Some updates on stories we've been following at Social Ch@nge:

Google's Evil Meter:

Ushahidi, a N2Y3 Mashup Challenge winner, proves that sometimes unrest and urgency, not funding, can be enough to get a project off the ground.  Ushahidi means 'testimony' in Swahili, but as a web tool it enables citizens to use mobile phones, emails or web forms to report and map crisis information. 

Okay, time for an update to let you know what we've been doing at Ushahidi with the winnings from the NetSquared Challenge.

Ory and I are madly dashing around Kenya, meeting with local NGOs and users to determine what we need to build into Ushahidi's Engine (version 2). We helped sponsor the local Barcamp Nairobi, which was a huge hit and brought us even more developers.

Last weekend three US-based members of the Ushahidi project team were able to get together for two full days of planning for the upcoming Net2 conference. (Photo proof exhibited... Erik, David and Juliana)

"That’s exactly what’s going on with this new crop of Web 2.0 applications cropping up in other parts of the world less concerned by the portability and ownership of their private data, and more concerned with how to avoid or survive the next ethnic cleansing, car bombing, natural disaster or rebel uprising. Quite honestly, as someone who deals with non-life threatening issues involved in the business of technology, social media and Web 2.0 on a daily basis, it’s a bit gratifying and validating to see these tools have an impact beyond making life more fun or easy." -- Mark 'Rizzn' Hopkins, Mashable.

SMS as Information Channel in Post-Election Kenya on the Mobile Active Blog has a great round up of how texting is being used during the crisis in Kenya:

* SMS is being used to conduct interviews with the press.
* Web site's like Ushahidi allow people to report acts of violence via SMS.
* Twitter channels like KenyaNews and afromusing provide news updates.

African Blogging Review by Sokari Ekine on Pambazuka News summarized African bloggers' thoughts last week about the situation in Kenya.

Kenyan's Capture Google's Attention on Mashable points to a post on the Google Public Policty Blog about NTV Kenya's YouTube Channel.

Technology for Advocacy, Messages from Kenya and Kenyans! You are Not Alone on the Kabissa Blog include informationn about social web tools being used to organize and share news from Kenya like: