SMEs & Facilitators

Hi everyone, I'm Analía and it's really great to be here, sharing experiences and learning frome everyone. Thanks a lot Charlotte for you warm welcome! I work for the Association of Progressive Communications (APC), and I've been involved in the GenARDIS project since 2008. GenARDS stands for Gender, Agriculture and Development in the Information Society, and it's a small grants project that supports local initiatives. In the last round 14 organisations from Africa and one from the Caribbean showed us all that can be done to empower rural women through ICTs. This included mobile phones to get market prices and avoid middlemen, radio shows to disseminate relevant agricultural information, digital cammeras for documenting traditional knowledge and more. I would like to thank the experts that are here with us, and I encourage everyone to take advantage of their experience, as well as to share your own successes and challenges. I live in Montevideo, Uruguay, and my background is in communications and linguistics. I speak Spanish, English and French.

Dear all, My name is Sarah Nalwoga Mpagi and it's a pleasure for me to be part of the SME for this e discussion forum on gender, ICTs and rural livelihoods. More so that we will not be able to see each other but, share experiences and learn from each other that will help all of us to shape the ICT sector and rural development for equitable access and usage of ICTs. These discussions help all stakeholders; the implementers, activists' e.t.c. come up with better solutions to gender equity in the use of ICTs and rural development. Am also delighted to see some people I know who will also be part of the SME team. My regards to all of you, not to mention you by your names, and this includes other people I will be sharing with for the first time in this forum. It will be a pleasure getting in touch on particular issues for the first time that I hope, will not be the end after the closure of this e-discussion. Am not new with these kinds of discussions though, am new on this forum. But I hope that this will highlight experiences and lessons to learn, for all of us, while we learn from each other for the effective gender integration in ICT and rural livelihoods. Coming basically from telecentre network level, we have been able to help telecentres so that they improve their performance; to enable them effectively reach out to the grassroots communities. When I refer to telecentres, I mean a place where all ICT tools are supposed to be accessed and utilized by the disadvantaged from the rural communities. That has also been enriched by the researches we conducted in the telecentres and the user communities, and the GEM evaluation we conducted in the telecentres, to enable us understand the gender issues regarding accessibility, usage and relevancy of telecentres to the user communities. I hope that the experiences that we will share and learn, will help to improve the gender access and usage of ICT for rural livelihoods. I look forward to the e discussions. "Imagine putting all those ideas together." the future would be bright. Thank you. Cheers, Sarah [img][/img]

Greetings everyone, I am Jenny Radloff based in Cape Town, South Africa working for the Association for Progressive Communications (APC) in the Women's Networking Support Programme. My role is to assist in facilitating this forum along with my colleagues. I may be absent for the first few days as I am travelling home. We are really looking forward to this forum and delighted to be collaborating with the folks from e-agriculture. APC is one of the five partners in the GenARDIS project (Gender, Agriculture and rural development in the information society) along with CTA, IDRC, IICD and HIVOS. Through the GenARDIS project, we have learnt much from the grantees and their projects. I would encourage you to visit the website at http://genardis.apcwomen.org and read some of the articles. We have constructed questions to guide the discussions here and I am sure that contributions will be both rich and informative. There is an experienced team of subject matter experts who are rooted in communities and in projects where ICTs (Information and Communication Technologies) are being implemented in creative and sustainable ways and where women's contribution to livelihoods is valued. We look forward to this e-agriculture forum! Warm Regards, Jenny Radloff

Hallo, My name is Janet C Achora I work with Women of Uganda Network in the Information Sharing and Networking Program. I have participated in a number of online discussions but none on ICTs, Gender and e-Agriculture! Although in the last two years we have been holding foras on eAgriculture,(Lango Form on eAgriculture) and it involves rural women farmers, policy makers and the community in Northern Uganda only, it will be interesting to learn from what is taking place at the global level. On a different note, I would like to welcome you to this exciting forum and I look forward to the experiences that will be shared. Warm regards,

Hello everyone. I am Michael, the lead facilitator of the e-Agriculture community of practice. Welcome to this, our 8th online forum! We are very pleased that GenARDIS and APC have brought this important subject to the e-Agricutlure community, and I am looking forward to learning as much as I can myself. We are very fortunate to have such a distinguished group of subject matter experts from around the world, representing a diverse set of perspectives and experiences, to enliven and enlighten our discussion in this forum. Please engage them fully. If you have any suggestions, comments or questions, please let me or one of the other facilitators know at any time. I have been working in the area of ICT4D for more than ten years now, starting with a regional commission in Asia-Pacific called "APHCA", then as the regional Information Management Officer for FAO, and now based in FAO headquarters. To learn more about me online, take a look at http://unhub.com/mongkolroek

Hello all my name is Hannah and I work as a consultant for various international development organisations. I am currently working with FAO and IFAD to support the sharing of learning around gender mainstreaming in their rural development work. It is interesting because in my experience both gender and knowledge management are issues which are fairly invisible and underlying other processes, and there is a real challenge in making the gender component of projects and processes visible - getting it reported on and shared well. My background is in participatory methodologies and communication technologies and processes. I began researching ICT for development for a masters dissertation and developed an action research project from that. The project looked at how the Reflect approach, which combines participatory tools with Freirean ideas for literacy and empowerment, could be the basis for people (especially women) to plan and set up their own telecentres to meet their specific information and communication needs in ways appropriate to their own skills and patterns of communication. Since then I have worked with different INGOs on a range of issues, including recent research and capacity building for Plan on mobile phones for development. But the realisation that people's cultures of communication are fundamental to their acceptance and use of different technologies or systems has been very influential in the way I approach all of this work.

Hello all, My name is Sophia and I'm pleased to be joining this discussion. I am the founding Director of WIGSAT which used to focus on Women in Global Science and Technology and now has shifted its focus to Women and Technology in Society. WIGSAT works in both ICT4D and in technology for development, all with a gender perspective. I have experience in both areas, mostly in terms of conceptual analysis, policy analysis and networking around these issues. My areas of interest are how ICTs can contribute to women's empowerment and gender equality - that is, how ICTs can improve women's lives, increase their knowledge and improve their options for choice and taking action in their lives, as well as how ICT can support women's income generation and livelihoods. This can take place directly, through access to markets, information on seed and agricultural techniques, etc. It can also occur through the use of technologies to increase the value of products and the efficiency and output of small enterprises. The book I co-edited with Nancy Hafkin, Cyberella or Cinderella: Empowering Women in the Knowledge Society looks at these different aspects of ICT4D. I look forward to exploring the possibilities in these areas further with you over the next coming weeks.

Greetings from Rome, My name is Eliane Najros and I am working for FAO on gender, information and communication for rural populations, particularly women. I am very involved right now in a programme with rural community radios and community listerners clubs in DRC and Niger. I am very interested in what every body has to share. Eliane http://www.fao.org/dimitra/en/ Eliane Najros Senior Project Manager/DIMITRA, FAO (Italy)

Hi everyone- I'm Helen Hambly Odame and I'm a faculty member at the University of Guelph in Ontario, Canada. My areas of interest are rural extension studies, communication for social and environmental change, gender issues in agriculture, and innovation systems. With respect to media/ICTs I am especially keen on rural radio. In the late 1990s - early 2000 while I was a research officer at the International Service for National Agricultural Research, I was collaborating with CTA on the project "Gender and Agriculture in the Information Society" which eventually led to the creation of GenARDIS. I'm very pleased to be part of this discussion group and look forward to hearing from many old and new friends and colleagues working in the area of Gender, ICTs and Rural Livelihoods. You can also see more information and resources on these pages: http://www.uoguelph.ca/~hhambly http://www.uoguelph.ca/snowden best regards Helen

Hello myself Dr. Anupama Saxena, currently working as Associate Professor of Political Science and In-charge Director of Women's Studies and Development Centre, Guru Ghasidas University, Bilaspur, Chhattisgarh India. I am engaged in research related to equity dimension of ICT for Development Projects in special context of India. Looking forward to enriching interaction on the forum best anupama

Hello, I am Fatema Begum Labony working at D.Net (www.dnet.org.bd) as Senior Research Associate. It is an ICT4D based research institution at Bangladesh. One of our major activities is to provide assistance and technical support to grassroots organizations and individual entrepreneurs for establish telecentre in local level. We also established more then 150 school based telecentre (www.clp.net.bd) from where student can take computer training along with livelihood information service. I am very happy to be part of this group. Really look forward to share my experience and learn from you all. Best Regards Fatema

Hi all, My name is Emilar Vushe, a Zimbabwean based in Pretoria, South Africa. I am with the Association for Progressive Communications (APC) assisting the executive director as well as work on resource mobilisation for all programmes. Currently, I am studying for a Masters in Information and Knowledge Management and I do hope the discussions here will inspire me to focus my thesis on e-agriculture! :D Looking forward to all discussions... Emi

Hi All, I am Bulbul Ahmed, Scientific Officer, Bangladesh Agricultural Research Institute, Khagrachari Hill district. From my opinion I want to say this forum will able to share the knowledges from verious experts about ICT and its effect on upgrading the rural social status and also find out the problems that are burden to flourish this theme. I wish this forum success.