Alas, we did not win the YoungOS Award, but Tabitha Gerrits with ID-Leaks did! Congratulations to her!
We heard it came close to actually only a few votes. I believe we lost, because the Dutch didn’t really understand the idea and because the Ducht simply LOVE to talk and talk and keep talking. Tabitha’s action is about creating more simpathy for development aid by adding a countervoice to the discussions held online, where AID is often degraded to ‘not helping at all’, ‘useless’ and a ‘waste of money’. Support for development aid is very important, but we from Rural Web believe it is more important to help people help themselves and achieve the goals they want to achieve. People from developing countries are not sitting around and waiting for AID, they want to roll up their sleeves and take their future in their own hands. Therefore:
Your supporting our idea is much more important to us than winning this innovation prize. You give us the feeling that we can actually help you make a difference in your lives, and that is worth so much more! Thank you to all who kept saying that this is a great idea and that we should carry on with it!
AC2A’s results: deals
Interesting discussions were held during the finale of AC2A. Discussion leader was Bart Lacroix of the 1% Club.
Deals made at the finale of A Call 2 Action:
- The 1% club will host a co-creation session in 2012. Goal is to bring together institutes who give ICT courses in developing countries. They are invited to bring these courses to the table so that Ruralweb can link to them, making them accessible to anybody in the world.
- KIT will help us to better define the goals and usergroup of the website. This will improve usability of the site.
- TNO, ICT4D department will implement Ruralweb in at least one already running project, as a pilot.
- Different organizations (Akvo, Bouba Telecentres and others) proposed to implement Ruralweb in their Telecentres (internet cafés) around the world. Pilots will therefore be held in Burkina Faso, Togo, Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania.
- VoiceOver will help to promote Ruralweb via its voice over network. This should yield both users and volunteers to further improve the site.
Below are pictures of how the deals were presented to the public: the persons who made the deal with us held up a leaf representing the deal. There were much more deals than we could show here or during the final session!
Rural Web in 2012
This was Rural Web for 2011. Next year we will take a small break and then give follow-up on these deals! We hope you will join us again to improve application of ICT for Development.
