Open Philanthropy - Interview with Mark Surman from the Shuttleworth Foundation

jedsundwall — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 17:00:49 -0400

Mark Surman, expert on collaboration, community building and social technology talks to us about how the Shuttleworth Foundation is kick starting South Africa's knowledge economy by using the principles that have made open source so successful.

Social Platform for Development Cooperation: How does it work? What does it look like?

arjencito — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 18:39:00 -0400

I would like to thank all the people that commented on my previous post titled "Another Social Network for Development Cooperation?". For me, the contributions confirmed the need for (and non-existence of) the open social platform for development cooperation organisations that I am proposing.

I will need two blog post to explain why and respond to all the comments and questions that I received:

Private development initiatives 'evaluated'

wrijneveld — Sat, 17 Nov 2007 04:58:25 -0500

CIDIN has done a study about private initiatives in development in Ghana and Malawi. Their conclusions are not all that positive about the effectiveness of these much applauded initiatives. See my (Dutch) summary here http://www.rijneveld.eu/2007/11/do-it-yourself-ontwikkelingswerk-onder.h... incl. link to the English report.

Neighbours in the Global Village

Thu, 25 May 2006 06:36:51 -0400

Project Screenshot

Supporting organization

NABUUR.com

URL

www.nabuur.com

Location

Amersfoort, Netherlands

Project Description

www.nabuur.com is a new concept in people-to-people global citizenship. The world is a global village and Nabuur facilitates contact among the neighbours.Nabuur builds virtual neighbourhoods around local communities in developing countries, to assist the latter to deal with their problems in their own terms. It links people in third world communities with their Neighbours on the internet. The locals say what they need, the virtual village helps them to find their future.

The characteristic features of NABUUR.COM are:

• Person to person contact, no bureaucracy between the local community and persons who assist
• The local community is in the lead. It is not thematic; they determine what needs to be done.
• It is not about giving money but about jointly working towards solutions
• It is transparent; the progress is visible to all
• Everyone can contribute, not just experts. What is needed is time, contacts, know-how, tools, manpower

After careful preparation NABUUR.COM is ready to expand. The basic tools, procedures and systems are in place. 75 local communities now take part. 200 local communities will be served by the end of 2006, 1000 by the end of 2007, many more after that.

Background.

There is no shortage of resources to assist Local Communities in their daily struggle. But, as William J. Clinton says, we do not have the systems to respond in a comprehensive way. Ngo’s, corporations and governments are all hierarchies and can therefore only deal with a limited number of projects. What is needed is something complementary, that can tap into the huge reservoir of resources in a self organizing way.

NABUUR.COM tries to create part of that structure, by combining the self organizing and time tested principle of neighbourship with the factor that makes the resources worldwide accessible, the Internet.

NABUUR.COM is a lab for democratized development assistance. It mobilizes world citizens. Not an amorphous anonymous mass, but as a collective of capable committed individuals ready for concrete individual tasks and responsibilities.

Nabuur is an old Dutch word for neighbour. Neighbours usually are not experts, funders or friends. But they do help each other in times of need by tapping into the resources out there. They organize themselves until the problem has been dealt with. That’s how it had worked for ages in a real communities, that’s how it can now work via the Internet. Today world citizens ARE neighbours in the Global Village .

NetSquared, an initiative of TechSoup.org - development aid