Maram starts by saying:

Maram goes onto to describe attending a recruitment event at Oxford University with the oil company she works for. During the event some protestors started demonstrating about what they argued the oil company had done in various parts of the world, accusing it of having acted criminally. Security guards started to remove the protestors, but a company official agreed to let them have their say for five minutes, saying that he respected their right to freedom of opinion. However, after the five minutes were up the protestors would not allow the official to continue, and kept heckling. Despite the disruption, the company official was disappointed when one of the protestors was finally carried away by force; he said that Britain was a free country and no one should be thrown out because he or she disagreed with the company's activities.

The second event that caught Maram's attention was a particular episode of the weekly BBC television programme Question Time, in which a panel of politicians and others face questions on current issues from a studio audience. Controversially, Question Time had allowed the chairman of the rightwing British National Party and Member of the European Parliament, Nick Griffin, to be part of the panel for this programme. Nick Griffin has previously been convicted of distributing material likely to incite racial hatred.

After setting the scene, Maram describes what happened on the programme:

These ventures weren’t picked by any scientific method; nor do they constitute any consensus of how ICTs will look in the next few years. These are just projects that caught my eye. Because these projects leverage technology in rural areas, let’s start with a discussion on how public internet kiosks could develop in the next few years.

Broadband? by wseltzer on Flickr.

In his blog ICTlogy, Ismael Peña-López wonders whether public internet kiosks like telecentres and cybercafés will evolve into enhanced e-centers, “where communities will gather and benefit from several community resources, computers and Internet access among others? Or will they just disappear?”

He continues:

As libraries have provided more than books, but a place where to learn to read and find kindred souls, it is my guess that public Internet access points will disappear as such, and will either be embedded within existing structures (libraries themselves, or civic centres, to name a few) or the existing telecentres and cybercafes will evolve into a next stage where the learning and community factors will be much more relevant. We are indeed seeing plenty of examples of this, and it is a matter of time that priorities or the focus turns upside down: instead of going to access the Internet and finding people, one will go and find people and use the Internet as an enhanced way to socialize. At its turn, this should be accompanied by the end of this false dichotomy on whether your a citizen or a netizen, as if the network had a live and a citizenry on its own. But time will tell.

Shilpa Sayura

Shilpa Sayura, which means sea of knowledge, is an interactive digital self-learning system based in Sri Lanka. Shilpa Sayura’s course of study began with eight subjects that parallels the national education curriculum so students in remote and rural areas can prepare for national school examinations in Sinhala, the country's predominant local language. The project has added another three courses, including lessons in Tamil and English.

Shilpa Sayura's open-source software was given away to non-profit educational providers and to rural Nansalas, a chain of government-developed telecentres. These telecentres in Sri Lanka fulfill many roles: Some provide connection to the web, but also offer fax, photocopying and printing services. They make money from phone calls, VOIP, and provide a bill-payment service. They are also places, the government hopes, where other ICT projects can bloom.

Harsha Liyanage, originally from Sri Lanka, blogs at Sustainability First: In search of sustainable telecentres. He records some of the issues Shilpa Sayura is attempting to overcome.

[The] Absence of competent teachers and adequate facilities handicap rural students in 80% of the Sri Lankas population. Now over 500 telecentres at rural outskirts provide a new window of opportunity. Shilpa Sayura enables students to interact with ICT to study 8 subjects digitally at tele centers and develop their knowledge to prepare for national examinations.

In March, 2008, Liyanage explained that Shilpa Sayura was undergoing growing pains.

Having a success story of a very compelling pilot, the project struggles at scaling up. Every telecentre operator of over 500 telecentres in Sri Lanka needs to have Shilpa Sayura installed in their telecentre. But, e-Fusion acknowledges it is not feasible at this present state.
• It needs technological improvements to ensure trouble free smooth run.
• Also needs technical capacity building at the telecentre operators to assist the users.
• Need to improve help-desk capacity to accept escalating demands
All these needs significant capital investments. They recognize it is not reasonable to tax the government to support further. Thus eyes at the CSR goodwill of the corporate partners.
In the mean time they plot the plans for an appropriate business model.

The blog Technology and Cultural Festival in Kandiyapitawew from Sri Lanka explains the educational benefits of the project.

We believe ‘Shilpa Sayura’ could contribute to addressing the issue of the shortage of school teachers, especially in distant rural area one which continues to be a setback to the county’s educational system.

The ‘Shilpa Sayura’ e-learning package covers eight school subjects, in Sinhala from grade six to O level. Shilpa Sayura’s simple interactive means of self study caters to students in remote communities with no access to urban educational resources. Still in its pilot stage Shilpa Sayura now operates in 20 ‘Nenasalas’ or tele-centers located in distant villages and promotes the concept of self learning among students in these secluded communities…The next phase would be the transformation of Shilpa Sayura into a National project to strengthen rural education and bridge the gap between rural and urban students.

M-Pesa

The next project takes place in Kenya, where the blog Global Warming contends the mobile phone is revolutionizing society.

There are presently over 17 million [mobile phone] subscribers and the fact that it is presently facilitating money transfers almost says it all. There are the two things that make everything work. One is communication and the second is convenience of transferring cash. After that you are in business anywhere.

M-Pesa began in 2007 as a way to perform simple banking transactions through cell phones. The telecom firms behind the project didn’t charge registration fees or require customers to have a bank account, often a major hurdle in Kenya because few people deal with traditional banks. Once signed-up, customers can use the M-Pesa application to pay bills, purchase more phone credits and transfer money within Kenya through data-enabled mobile phones. M-Pesa now allows customers to book airline tickets. Safaricom, the company responsible for M-Pesa, is beginning a pilot project to let customers pay for water usage.

M-Pesa agent in Bunda by emilsjoblom in Flickr.

In July 2009 M-Pesa totaled more than seven million subscribers, who collect or send money through a network of more than 1400 bank agents, making it the largest bank in the country. These customers transfer more than $2.5 million every month.

Just a few weeks ago, M-Pesa went international, moving into the United Kingdom by allowing people to send money back to phone numbers in Kenya through a web interface. The transaction costs as little as $8 US for sending 150 Pounds. A 2005 study found traditional money transfer firms charged fees between 2.5 and 40 percent of the transfer for anything below 100 Pounds.

David Zarraga, from the blog Mobile Behavior has a good rundown on how M-Pesa works.

Registered M-PESA customers can “deposit” hard currency with any M-PESA agent in exchange for e-money, which is uploaded into the customer’s M-PESA account. For 38 US cents, the customer can then transfer this money to another registered customer’s M-PESA account via SMS. Once the recipient receives the SMS confirmation, the hard currency can then be withdrawn from the nearest M-PESA agent, completing the money transfer process.

How does the M-PESA service benefit the average Kenyan? Olga Morawczynski, a PhD candidate at the University of Edinburgh who spoke at the GSM World Congress in Barcelona last February, shared the story of Martin, a shoe-maker in Kibera, an informal settlement just outside Nairobi. Martin makes about US$ 20 a day from his trade and sends a quarter of his earnings to his wife and mother, who live in Western Kenya, over 100 miles away. M-PESA saves Martin time, allowing him to work his trade instead of having to travel far outside his place of work to find a bank. The service also enables him to make frequent transfers – about 5 times a month – thereby allowing him to send a week’s earnings when his family needs the money most.

The blog Bankelele: Nairobi Banker lists advantages and disadvantages for banking with M-Pesa.

Benefits of m-pesa banking
- 24 hour banking: More reach & access than any bank or ATM network
- Mobile banking with operator tends to be cheaper then mobile banking via bank provided services
- Saving in transport costs and banking transaction costs
- Can pay a variety of bills for utilities at a low cost
Challenges of m-pesa banking
- Lack of float at dealers to transact/occasional mpesa system downtime
- No credit history; and the clumsy expensive statement from Safaricom not useful yet
- Calls for discipline to build savings
- Funds are not insured, and are more prone to crime. And dealing with a stolen phone in Kenya is not a pleasant experience.

eChoupal
Indian Tobacco Company, one of India’s largest exporters, created eChoupal, a series of rural information centers where farmers can communicate directly to other farmers, different markets and experts through the internet. These village internet kiosks were first installed for farmers to learn in local languages the latest information regarding national and international prices in soy, wheat, tobacco and shrimp. But the platform has morphed to providing other important information, such as weather conditions and the latest scientific practices. In 2006, eChoupal counted 3.5 million farmers who used 5,200 internet kiosks throughout more than 30,000 villages.

Harvesting Wheat #1 by Meanest Indian on Flickr.

The farmers pay a local coordinator a small sum to use the kiosk, which can also be used to order seed, fertilizers and other goods.

The blog NeoProducts Kiosks, from the UK, makes the point that part of eChoupal’s success comes from leaving behind the traditional buyers.

e-Choupal has been created by ITC Limited to enable rural farmers in India to buy and sell agricultural produce like soya beans, wheat, and coffee. It does this by allowing them directly to negotiate the sale of their produce via a network of PCs and kiosks in 6,500 centres spread across 100 districts in 10 states. Previously, the farmers had to go through numerous and sometime corrupt intermediaries.

What a great idea and what a fantastic use of kiosks! Allowing shared public access to interactive technology is what kiosks are all about. And this is only the beginning.

Chirag Jethmalani is a management student from Mumbai who blogs about Indian business in Squamble. Here he provides his take on e Choupal.

e Choupal was conceived to tackle the challenges posed by the unique features of Indian agriculture, characterized by fragmented farms, weak infrastructure and the involvement of numerous intermediaries…

Traditionally, these commodities were procured in “mandis” (major agricultural marketing centers in rural areas of India), where the middleman used to make most of the profit. These middlemen used unscientific and sometimes outright unfair means to judge the quality of the product to set the price. Difference in price for good quality and inferior quality was less, and hence there was no incentive for the farmers to invest and produce good quality output. With eChoupal, the farmers have a choice and the exploitative power of the middleman is neutralised.
ICT platform that facilitates flow of information and knowledge, and supports market transactions on line.
* It transmits Information (weather, prices, news),
* It transfers Knowledge (farm management, risk management)
* It facilitates sales of Farm Inputs (screened for quality) and
* It offers the choice of an alternative Output-marketing channel (convenience, lower transaction costs) to the farmer right at his doorstep
* It is an interlocking network of partnerships (ITC + Met Dept + Universities + Input COs + Sanyojaks, the erstwhile Commission Agents) bringing the best-inclass in information, knowledge and inputs.

Just because e-Choupal has a good platform and business model doesn’t make it a gurantee for success in India. To do this, people must understand rural markets.

Rural markets are both economic and social networks and there is a strong connection between the operation of social and economic transactions. Understanding the operations is vital before the systems are conceptualized. Use of local population, as much as possible helped the network to get the acceptance closely.

- Hi Sylwia, tell us a bit about you and your life, please.

I was born in Poland and at the age of 18 moved to Hungary to study, and later to work in Budapest. I studied Hungarian, German and American linguistics. During studies and first years of employment at Nokia and TCS Hungary I supported a Montessori high school helping talented youth from local Romani minorities to reach higher education - basically teaching English during evening class. I worked with local Polish scouting group and stayed involved in organising subcultural cultural events. I also started my adventure with photography then.
In 2006, when my son was born, I relocated to the UK and joined a word of mouth agency, 1000heads, where I am until now using my personal passion for blogging in daily work.

- How did u get involved with GV?

I read about GV Summit 2008 in Budapest on a brilliant Polish blog written in Hungary and really regretted that I missed it (I already lived in the UK at the time). I noticed that GV Lingua had no Polish translation so I suggested helping out. I also posted few articles about Poland, but my main focus so far was ensuring the Polish Lingua goes live and grows gradually. Once this is accomplished I hope to spend more time on articles about Poland. I also want to get involved in Global Voices Advocacy one day fairly soon.

- What are the challenges you have faced at GV in Polish?

The first challenge was to create a dedicated team and I think that after few months we are there now. I think it's an on-going process though - the more content we have, the more exposure we get and thus more volunteers. There are eight girls working on GV Polska now - we all support each other not only in translating GV content but also outside of this voluntary work. It takes a certain amount of content for audience to understand what GV Polska is about, so I am glad we are working on this now. GV Polska went live recently and we have started working on other supporting mechanisms (mapping out the countries we post about on a Google map, so we do not focus on few regions too much, but try to show events in all parts of the world; engaging in conversations outside of Twitter and gradually establishing more personal relationships with Polish bloggers and social media fans). I think in another six months, we will see the results of our current work outside of the main platform.

- How do you insert GV Polska on the local blogosphere, have you had problems with it?

I think establishing an on-line presence is a lengthy process, and we are beginning to gain readership on the site, but also discussion in other platforms - Twitter, Facebook, Blip (Polish Twitter) and Flaker (also a Polish site). Our presence on Twitter has given us an amazing push in terms of readership, but also interactiveness - we talk about our articles there. Now we need to bring those discussions on to the Lingua blog :) Flaker is a good site for incorporating GV Polska's presence in Polish social media, so we work on that too. I also think it's a very complex process and consists of different elements (I would love to see what other Lingua teams think!). I think one, probably the most important factor is the demand for information. I think we need to target the right people and gradually we are doing so. Our challenge at the moment though is the fact that we only have one of our team members is based in Poland, so it's difficult to spread the word about the site in local communities if our private networks are based elsewhere. You also need to remember that we are reporting on discussions, we do not generate them, which restricts us in taking active part in discussions in local blogosphere. I think we need to gradually build up our content and think outside the box on how we can establish on-going strong relationships with Polish bloggers. What proves effective at the moment are the Twitter and Flaker engagements and our personal relationships with local bloggers. I think it's a good starting point.

- Sylwia, as a lingua editor what do you perceive will be our challenge in the near future?

With GV Polska, we will now gradually work on other tools around the main blog to reach out to different audiences and to relate our articles to different topics in Poland. Now that we have reached our first 100 posts, we have something to show and we can develop a stronger presence in Polish social media. Our next challenge will be to encourage our readers not only to read, but also to comment on our posts and with this to have a large community of GV Polska readers who spread the word about GV's message, although with current trends of moving away from commenting on blogs to discussing blog content in other places online, we might instead invest our time there. I really hope that we will be able to do something offline for our Polish readers soon, to bring our message closer to every day reality of Polish citizens - simply to show them who we are, why we do it all for free and what is the aim. Quite frankly, I want to use my other projects, like Bar Mleczny and Barcamp Transparency (next year planned for Poland too) to help to spread the word about GV Polska. I also think that posting in English about Poland will help promoting work of GV Polska better, so that will be my next, personal task.

Now, in general terms, I am not sure if it's a challenge or just something to think about, and it depends on resources too, so might not be a short term plan but I think there is one bit of communication missing from the current model, which is addressing local issues and conversations in local languages. Somehow I feel it's a missing bit in closing the entire circle of information sharing. I also think it would help Lingua sites in addressing the local audience and promote Global Voices‘ message locally - I mean if I talk about discussions related to other countries in Polish to Polish audience it's great, but I think it would be also very exciting to be able to address Polish issues there. Now, I am not sure how the model would work - that would be another project, ‘Lingua Local' if you like. We could have a separate team in place to post updates on local conversations, or engage translators (who are also authors in many cases) in this additional activity. I am confident that if the rest of the community is up for it, one day we will be able to consider this option too.

- As a translator, how has GV improved your skills?

First of all I do not work in translation at the moment so it's great to keep doing it for GV Lingua. My jobs were always related to translation but not specifically based on it, so it's good I can keep this learned skill active and practice it in my free time. It's one of those things that is worth keeping alive, and while you are doing it you develop constantly.
As a team we always discuss any problems in translations and support each other, which I find really helpful because there is sometimes need for second opinion. We use our Google group to post questions and quite recently we started weekly meet-ups on IRC to discuss GV related issues and gossip a bit;)
I also think I translate faster now, because I want to do the posts and all the other activities related to it - tweet it, map it, etc. The great thing about Global Voices content is that it is very rich in different topics and cultures - so we not only learn while working, but become exposed to various types of information which we might not always read about elsewhere.

- This is going to get a long answer I think. Sylwia, what other internet activities do you have?

Well, I have few on-going presences and more current projects. My first blog, written in Polish is very personal. My English blog is related to my work and interests (social media, ethics, activism, photography). My Hungarian blog is written for friends, but not too often. My son's blog is updated for his UK based family, but also for my friends outside the UK. I am considering bringing them all to one, self-hosted platform now.
I use Twitter (@presleysylwia) and FriendFeed for business networking and communicating with the local community, learning and sharing insights. Flickr is my photo sharing place where I meet interesting artists. Qik and YouTube are places where I share video updates - rather diary of what I do. I use Facebook, Nasza-Klara (Polish social network) and LinkedIn for networking - depending on whom I want to reach. And no, I do not spend all day on all those sites:) I use them each in its own rhythm, whenever required ;)

As for projects there is Bar Mleczny - blog aiming to bring UK-based Polish bloggers together and cross the bridge between British and Polish cultures. It's still a small, one-year-old baby, but with dreams to grow big and one day open an actual dairy bar in Oxford combined with arts, music and support for the local Polish community.
I have co-organised Barcamp Transparency this summer, where we talked about transparency issues in open government, social media and cyber-activism. We want to take this barcamp to Italy, Poland and Spain next year, as well as repeat the one in Oxford. I think barcamp is the best format for creative meeting of people from different business areas on a specific topic. It's free, flexible, but also very specific and practical.

I also got involved in Oxford Twestival in February and have repeated it now, in September. This event brings together all the important aspects of my life really (maybe apart from motherhood;)) - charity work, art and social media in real life. Sometimes people think or actually practice on-line presence completely separating it from every day life, but for me all the online places I am in simply document and enhance my reality. Thus, I am happy I can do a party for similarly minded people who all come over to a pub in Oxford to listen to good music and poetry and all this to raise money to support Oxfam's work in Mali. I am also happy that Oxford can be a part of this global initiative. We have managed to raise £1,570, which is a great sum for such a small community (60 attendees!). And we had fun! I am sure there will be another Twestival in Oxford in spring and I hope I can get involved in it too.
I have also helped out in social media strategy on few other voluntary projects, like World University Project for instance, and I hope to do so in the bear future.

I am very passionate about social media and the positive effect it can have in supporting work of individuals, as well as organisations. I am trying to feed as much information as possible to the GV community, but I also do not want to be monotonous:) so I am trying to feed the information which can be crucial for us. I am a strong supporter of Twitter in our work too, and I think it's great we are gradually moving to other types of social media and reaching out to different audiences. Global Voices as a site and as a community has a great potential and I am very happy I can be a part of it!

- Not all of us manage to succeed at promoting our sites on Facebook and Twitter. What suggestions can you give us?

I think one point is not to push it if you do not feel you enjoy doing it. So the first step is to check your options - mainly the local community of Twitter, Facebook or other online places. If you think you have good audience there and you can bring value to their community (you have people on Twitter who talk about citizen journalism, current events, social media, etc) it's worth trying to build a GV Lingua profile there. You do not have to update it on a daily basis - everyone has their own rhythm, but it's worth doing it in a genuine, natural, personal way. With the site content, which is strongly related to online communities we all bring value. And I am sure once you start talking to others and networking you will see that the presence is not only fun but also works in both directions - you will get fed with interesting facts, local social media events, projects. Just do it;)

- You mentioned photography as a personal interest, what is your approach to it?

Photography and poetry (recently also video) are my passions. I believe in harmony in life, and without art my life would be unbalanced - photography is a way of showing the world how I see it, how I feel about things, what stage of my life I am in. It is my private mirror, but also my statement, if that makes sense. I like experimenting with different ways of communication - it might be the linguist blood in me (my mother is a linguist;)), but generally the photos I take reflect the way I see the world: in details, working out the general trends form little bits and pieces - a mosaic of a kind. I take photos when I feel like, but I do have a target of one exhibition per year to ensure I do not neglect this bit of my life. So far I managed to over deliver on that front, so I can relax and invest more time in social media projects.

- What about other interests? Let's say books, movies, the usual thing?

I like fusion jazz and anything related or created in post-modern style, maybe this is why I like the interactiveness of the web so much. And I have my ‘the best'-lists:) Books: Umberto Eco ‘Name of the Rose' (1), Anne Rice ‘Interview with the Vampire' (2), basically everything from Erich Fromm and Jean Baudrillard (3). Films: ‘Total Eclipse' (1), ‘Before the Rain' (2), ‘28 Days After' (3). Painters: Van Gogh (1) William Wharton (2), Georgia O'Keffee (3). I better stop now, it starts to look like a Facebook meme:D.

Thanks Sylwia.

What is Creole, exactly? This is probably one of the most debated topics among linguists worldwide - it is an incredibly complex and diverse language. The fruit of migrations and population mingling, Creole language has been, since the distant times of slavery, a vernacular language, either prohibited or underrated. But things started to change in the 1980s, as explained by the Creole-oriented Reunionese blog, Renyone [Cr, Eng]:

In 1981 scientists having Creole as their mother tongue started asking themselves questions about the methods that could be used to promote the Creole language, following a scientific symposium organised by the international committee for Creole studies working on the theme: a Creole / Creoles, continuity and creativity in the Creole world.

Renyone gives more details about the establishment of what has become a tradition in most Creolophone countries [Eng]:

In 1982 the Seychelles government organised a Creole week.
[…]
The first international BANNZIL KREYOL day took place on the 28th October 1983. Ever since, the 28th October has been celebrated annually in all Creole countries the world over.

Since then, the preservation of this vernacular language, sometimes called a dialect, has been a great concern for many people as shown by this statement of objectives published by the International Organization of Creole People. A Facebook group named “Annou Palé Patwa” (Creole for “Let's speak Patois/Creole) relays this concern since in a topic entitled Creole Month, a Trinidadian user wonders about this year's celebration [En]:

Well October is Creole month the world over, what can we do to promote it in Trinidad?
[…]
What do you think will be the best way to go if we were to do something national?

Initiatives to promote, preserve or celebrate Creole are local field work as much as governemental policy. Here is a post published by Dominican blogger Living Dominica two years ago in which we can see that in some countries, this celebration is not just a token gesture [En]:

This month is Creole time here on Dominica, which is my very favorite celebration. This time of year is a festival honoring all things Dominican. Everyone gets into the spirit of things in the days leading up to Independence Day (Nov. 3) and the World Creole Music Festival (Oct. 26-28)

Mentioned above, the World Creole Music Festival was born 13 years ago from the Dominican government's will to associate the International Creole Month to its celebration of the Independence of the island on November 3rd 1978.

From all this, it is quite obvious that Creole Month and Creole Day, October 28th, are not uniformly celebrated worldwide. Here are some posts about 2009 Creole Day events:

From London, the group MBMB “Minm Biten, Minm Bagay” (Guadeloupean and Martinican Creole phrases which mean “it's all the same”) wrote a post in order to invite people to the event that took place on Sept. 27th 2009 and also to recall previous editions of their “MBMB Kreyol Day”.

In Canada, the Creole-oriented organization Kepkaa invites people for “Mwa kréyol la nan Monréyal” (Haitian Creole for “Creole Month in Montreal”) in a post entitled “Ann fété kilti kreyol nou yo” (Haitian Creole for “Let's celebrate Creole cultures together”). Another Canadian event was announced on Miss Creole Canada Pageant and relayed on Facebook, it was the first of its kind, crowning of a Miss from Creole heritage, which took place on October 17th, as part of the celebration of the Creole Month.

In Paris, blogger Anba pyé mango-la announces a cultural evening called “Tan Kréyol” (Creole for “Hear Creole”) where the oral transmission of Creole is given a place of honor [Fr Cr]:

Senn-la wouvè ba tout moun : poèt, chantè, slamè, makè, kontè, mizisyen… .

In Guadeloupe, the local authorities have organized a month-long program taking place in different locations, in order to celebrate “Mwa òktòb kréyol an mouvman” (Creole for “October, Creole in motion). Here are the two main points of this program posted by guadeloupe.coconews [Fr Cr]:

1. Prèmyé dékatman ba tout moun
2. Dézyèm dékatman èvè zanfan-lékòl

Finally, from Martinique, montraykreyol publishes a post which questions the Creole Month celebration there and most precisely the relevance of celebrating Creole in a week-long festival [Fr Cr]:

Es ou ka kwè ki an sel simenn pou défann kréyol adan tout lanné-a sifizan ?

CLAUDE MARLIN : Dapré mwen non, sa ja an pal pou kréyol-la menm manniè ki tout travay-la ki za fet asou lang-lan. Men fok pandan tout lanné-a, ni travay ki pou fet, fok véyatif toulong, pas menm si kréyol ka rantré latélévizion, laradio, nan piblisité kontel, bien délè sa ka an kréyol toubònman, tjòlòlò ek sa pé désèvi lang-la.

Babygate: trafficking children to cover demand

Malinda, an adoptive mother of two Chinese girls,  writes in her blog Adoption Talk about the lengths some corrupt individuals are going to ensure the steady flow of adoptable babies to people able to pay the pricey adoption fees. In her post Adoption Corruption: Trafficking in the news she highlights recent cases in Cameroon, where children are kidnapped in order to be placed for adoption; Korea, where young parents put their baby on sale on the Internet; Guatemala, where the army abducted and sold more than 333 children for adoption and where recently babies and children were put up for adoption without parental consent; and Ethiopia, where unregulated agencies are convincing families to give their children up for adoption, promising them the children will later return to them or that the agency will help support the remainder of the family. Similar cases have been seen in numerous other countries.

Mothers coming together to secure their human rights

Some adoptive mothers do what they can to ensure one woman's right to motherhood doesn't go against the reproductive rights of another mother.

One such option is open adoptions, a sometimes controversial decision where the child remains in contact with the birth mother and is aware that due to other circumstances, she wasn't able to take care of them.

One woman in the United States, Leigh, writes a blog called Open Adoption Round Table about the challenges of giving her child up for adoption in a semi-open arrangement.

Another blogger and writer Dawn Friedman tells a story in her blog from the opposite perspective of adopting her daughter, Madison, while keeping an open line of communication with the birth mother. Friedman is also an activist for adoption reform in the United States. She believes pregnancy counseling in unplanned pregnancies too easily pushes women towards giving up their babies for adoption without informing them adequately of how difficult it is. Friedman also recommends that the process of adoption counseling should include a post-labor session where women are accompanied through the decision making process and advised of their rights and possibilities after giving birth, in case they are having second thoughts or have additional concerns.

Birth mothers

Lorraine Dusky in the United States, who runs the Birth Mother, First Mother Forum had medical history that made her think that birth control pills she took during pregnancy could have affected the child she placed in adoption, but when she tried to contact the adoptive family through the agency to let them know, they refused to send over the information.

She relinquished her child with no particular coercion, but the laws for “closed records” in adoptions may have cost her daughter's life.

But what about natural mothers in developing countries? Where are their voices? Some of them have written letters to the children they've placed for adoption, as Pam Conell of families.com tells us in her book review of I Wish for You a Beautiful Life: Letters from the Korean birthmothers of Ae Ran Won.

Others are telling their stories through documentaries, or after being reunited with their natural children. And there are some others who tell of women who don't regret giving their children up for adoption, considering it was the best alternative. However some women, like  Malinda in the USA,  adoptive parent of Chinese Girls who writes AdoptionTalk believes that these last representations have to be taken with a grain of salt:

These representations of foreign birth mothers allow us to divorce ourselves from the experience of these birth mothers, to minimize their pain, and to justify how much better off our children are with us than with them.

The Voices of the Adopted:

Mary Grace in China by endbradley

The voices of the adoptees are as varied as any of the other parts of the adoption triad. But in general they share some points of view in common: The desire to know about their origins and the reason for their adoption and the hope that their birth mothers made an informed decision to part with them.  They also believe in the right to know their history if they choose, to know about their adoptee status from early on and have it acknowledged as part of their identity.

For example Susan from ReadingWritingLiving, an adult adoptee born in the 1960's, identified with TV drama Mad Men, particularly in their portrayal of adoptions in that time period, where women hid their shameful unwanted pregnancies until giving birth and how adopted children where seen as discards. She sums it up in her post Mad Men: A Window into my Own Past

Yes, it was painful to hear this but also WILDLY refreshing to have someone just come out and SAY it.

In the I am adopted [es]blog in Spanish, David Azcona writes about his difficult childhood, adoption at the age of 6 and the instability and inability to bond with people [es] he's felt since. It is also a place for other adoptees to post their adoption stories, and to share their experiences. In the comment threads of his about page, stories about apropriated babies [es] with no knowledge of their birth parents, twins separated at birth[es] by nurses who told parents one of the babies had died[es] and requests from birth mothers trying to contact their children as well as the other way around.

An adoptee answers a question asked on a website regarding love between adoptees and adoptive parents:

I was adopted as a baby by the two most loving, caring and supportive parents a child and young adult could ever wish for. I also have a younger adopted brother.

I don't think my biological parents could have loved me more than my adoptive ones.

Other adoptees with similar experiences chime in, some with relationships with both natural parents and adoptive parents and others who have only known their adoptive families. In this particular thread, the experiences are overwhelmingly positive towards adoption.

Some adoptees advocate against adoption. Lost Letters, an adoptee herself who writes in the Anti-Adoption livejournal community believes that instead of using so much money to aid in adoption processes and fees, it should be spent in improving the conditions of the birth parents so they can take care of their family. She adds:

I understand that my actual position on adoption is going to piss people off because people want to believe that adoption is a win/win/win situation for everyone, because people think that middle class white women deserve children no matter what, because people think that our western society is so wonderful that all children should be bought up here.

AmyAdoptee who posts in the Adult Adoptees Advocating for Change forum writes:

The adoption industry intentionally pits us against each other.  We are letting them do it.  In fact, the adoption industry gets a wonderful kick out of this.  Here is an article that supports generally our point of view but they ask that we refrain from attacking adoptive parents.  There is nothing wrong with a healthy discourse.

PhilM, in the same forum thread discussing how adoptive parents perceive them, clarifies:

I’m angry at a society that ignores the problems of adoption, and the harm it causes. I’m angry that when I try to talk about these things, I am marginalized and dismissed with comments along the lines of “well, everyone experiences it differently” and “most adoptees I know love their adoptive parents” and others. I am angry that, because I speak out about adoption, people question my love for my adoptive family. And, I admit, I get angry when individuals parrot these messages.

I don’t need a lecture for how to behave in dialogue. I need people willing to engage in it.

The way forward

As with any delicate issue, it touches a sensitive chord for all those involved: adoptive mothers, birth mothers and adopted children. However, it seems they all meet and agree on one important point: Transparency in the adoption process is vital to safeguard the human rights for the mothers and the children, and discussing adoption openly encourages transparency.

EDITED TO ADD:

We have removed a reference to a blogger who didn't wish to be quoted or mentioned in this post. To her, our apologies, it was in no way our intention to infringe on her or offend, but to provide a multiplicity of visions regarding a sensible subject.

After a strange week of battling between Trafigura's lawyers from the firm Carter-Ruck and The Guardian, and a week of terrible publicity for the company, Trafigura finally gave in and said the preliminary report could be made public.

The draft study contains details of waste dumped in Abidjan, Côte d'Ivoire, in 2006 - and evidence of its chemical components, and their potential effect.

The injunction banned The Guardian from reproducing or reporting the Minton Report which was already available on Wikileaks.org and the Norwegian media (maybe elsewhere, too). The order was obtained by lawyers Carter-Ruck on behalf of its client Trafigura.

“No newspaper can reveal the contents of this report, but at least we can now say that it exists and has been rendered secret. The option of ‘publishing and be damned' is not available.” [The Guardian, 14.10.09]

But until last week no-one, except those it involved, knew that the injunction existed and that The Guardian could not report the order. Why? It's one of many existing secret injunctions, which not only ban reporting a story but also the existence of the ban itself.

The only reason we know about it now, is because of one British member of parliament (MP), Paul Farrelly. As Private Eye, a UK magazine famous for its investigative journalism and its disdain for Carter-Ruck, a leading media libel litigation firm, said this week on its website, Farrelly's “intention was to test this conspiracy of silence [i.e. secret 'super injunctions'] by asking questions about it in Parliament”.

How? Because MPs are protected under the Bill of Rights of 1689, which declares that “freedom of speech and debates or proceedings in Parliament ought not to be impeached or questioned in any place or court outside Parliament.”

Therefore an MP's comments can be published without fear of legal action (a fuller history at this link). But The Guardian knew that to reproduce Paul Farrelly's question (below, tabled in Parliament, see point ii.) would contravene the existing order. So it contacted Carter-Ruck to see if they could change the terms of the injunction. “We were advised by Carter-Ruck that publication would place us in contempt of court,” stated The Guardian.

Carter-Ruck meanwhile maintained that The Guardian's account was ‘misleading'. Its full statement can be found at this PDF link. The lawyers acting on behalf of Trafigura said they would take further instructions from their clients, but The Guardian published its article first.

A very comprehensive account of the extraordinary activity online can be found on the Online Journalism Blog but to sum it up:

• After the Guardian posted an account stating that it was not able to report a Parliamentary question that was publicly available without mentioning any details at all, an online frenzy whipped up, with several bloggers working out what the question in question was. The notion that journalists could not report Parliament shocked readers of The Guardian's article - both its critics and fans.
• Twitter users and blogs willfully ignored the injunction - if its possible to ignore a secret injunction - and passed on links and keywords connecting Trafigura and Carter-Ruck to Paul Farrelly's question, and even the Minton Report. At one point, for example, #Trafigura was the top trending topic on Twitter - globally.
• So although the Guardian had still not reported the question or broken the terms of the Order, all the information contained in Farrelly's question was out there. The Guardian intended to go to court to fight the Order, but Carter-Ruck said it would no longer try to prevent his publication reporting MP Paul Farrelly’s parliamentary question about Trafigura. “The parties have now agreed to an amendment to the existing Order so as to reflect that,” Carter-Ruck reported in its statement.
• The Guardian's editor, Alan Rusbridger, who tweeted sporadic updates, said the firm had “caved-in” and the paper finally reported Farrelly's question. The Guardian, and other mainstream media, praised social media for its role in applying pressure throughout the day.

Simply put - whether defiant online users were the reason Carter-Ruck agreed to vary the order or not - Paul Farrelly's question could not be suppressed online. And what's more, thousands of people who had never heard of Trafigura now knew its name and its connection to a toxic waste scandal.

Then, later in the week  Carter-Ruck suggested debate could be blocked in Parliament by claiming that the secret injunction it had obtained is “sub judice,” ie. in active legal proceedings. If proved, it would prohibit any motion, debate or question concerning the matters going ahead, under Westminster rules.

A day later the Minton Report injunction was lifted in the British press.

Before, journalists could only say it existed, nothing more. And that's what was really controversial here.

Because the report is all to do with the dumping of waste in West Africa.

For background on the waste dump in the Côte d'Ivoire in 2006 please read this commentary on Journalism.co.uk: ‘The journalist and NGO collaboration to expose Ivory Coast toxic waste dump'. For more detailed information on events themselves, visit The Guardian's section on Trafigura and the Probo Koala.

Further information on the Trafigura-Guardian story can be found in the Journalism.co.uk blog updates at this link.

Banglalink cell phone advertisement, Dhaka, Bangladesh, by Wonderlane on Flickr (Creative Commons)

This lesson has been passed around as a prime example of the significance of internet and communication technologies – especially the relatively cheap and reliable mobile phone – helping raise living standards in the developing world. This simple technology allows someone from the so-called bottom of the economic pyramid to improve his economic prospects, bettering the quality of life for his entire family. If the mobile phone can help the fisherman extend his contacts and increase his market price, think of what it would do to the working poor all over the world?

This year the number of worldwide mobile phone users hit 4.6 billion people. Much of that growth has taken place in the developing world. And, as phones expanded in some countries, so did economic development. (At least that’s what cellphone companies have said.)

While the numbers remain strong and the digital divide may be decreasing, one problem remains: The fisherman story is a little out of date. Like other things, technology has moved on. If ICTs are going to continue to positively affect human development, they must also keep up.

In the first of two posts, I’d like to explore how ICTs for development, ICT4D, may be changing in the short-term future. Then, I’d like to investigate some of the new cutting-edge projects taking place around the world. As always, if you’ve got some to share, please let us know.

Richard Heeks argues that for this new phase, ICTs will require a new outlook on how they view the poor. People in developing countries should no longer be characterized as passive consumers. Instead, they should be seen as active producers and innovators.

From his blog, ICTs for Development, Heeks introduces a new academic paper outlining where he thinks ICT4Ds should go.

a) New Hardware Priorities: a need for innovation around low-cost, broad-reach terminals, telecommunications, and power. A need to bring the hardware success story of the last decade – mobiles – even more centre stage. The paper also discusses implications of broadband, cloud computing, and individualisation of hardware devices.
b) New Application Priorities: the growth of participatory content creation, and the use of ICTs to create new income and employment for the world’s poor. The paper also discusses implications of FOSS, and the growth of applications to address urban poverty, security, economic growth, and climate change.
c) New Innovation Models: the growing need for – and potential of – innovation that moves beyond top-down, laboratory-type models. This includes collaborative (para-poor) models that work alongside poor communities. It also means greater attention to the grassroots (per-poor) innovation that is arising from within those communities. The paper also discusses the new innovation intermediaries that are emerging in private and NGO sectors.
d) New Implementation Models: based on the limitations of ICT4D 1.0 projects, there will be greater emphasis on sustainability, scalability and ICT4D project evaluation. This will necessitate more process than blueprint approaches to implementation, and better techniques for closing design—reality gaps. The paper also discusses new funding mechanisms and new organisation forms that are increasingly seen.
e) New Worldviews: effective ICT4D 2.0 policies, strategies and projects will require “tribrid” champions. They must understand enough about the three domains of computer science, information systems, and development studies to draw key lessons and to interact with and manage domain professionals. Training programmes and working group formation must reflect this need.

Yochai Benkler is a Harvard University professor of entrepreneurial legal studies and the co-director of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society, which hosted the September 23-24 forum Communication and Development: The Freedom Connection.

In an essay written for the forum, Benkler argues the next generation of ICTs must continue to be flexible and dynamic, while also becoming more powerful. Perhaps desiners will leverage cloud applications, social software or organizational tools.

But mobile phones alone will not solve the problem.

The reason mobile phones were such a successful early ICT platform in poorer countries was that they are much cheaper; and they rely on networks that run all the intelligence in the network, allowing for very cheap edge devices. Yet it was precisely the stupidity, or simplicity, of the network relative to the “intelligence” or computational complexity of the edge devices that was so critical to the development of the network information economy and society as it has. A drive to make cheap devices available throughout poorer countries that does not take account of whether the cheapness comes at the expense of a truly open, neutral network will result in a very different kind of ICT platform than the one we imagine as so creative and productive in the wealthier economies…

Here is his recipe for the next generation of ICTs for development.

Devices must be cheap enough to be widely distributed as basic background features, owned by individuals in a pattern uncorrelated with pre-existing power relations. Devices must be accompanied with skills training in the use of the device and the open network, so that the difficulty of use does not continue to drive people to the simpler devices that deliver the more predictable, controlled, and “safe” applications. In the near future, this may mean programs focused on women, much as micro-lending has been, or youths and children. In the longer term, it must mean an emphasis on cheap computers from the lineage of the personal computer, not souped-up mobile phones. Or, in the alternative, it means that we need a heavier focus on regulatory interventions that will require mobile phones and phone networks to be more open and flexible—although this is a harder row to hoe. And in all events it means devices coupled with training.

I wonder if anyone envisions a world where ICTs for the industrialized world will be much the same as those for the millions of users in the developing world? For all the advances ICTs have made in the past six years, it seems we still aren’t at a point where the two worlds converge on technological matters.

Li Rivercruise-2, by Akiwitz on Flickr (Creative Commons)

Here is an interesting investigation from Mira Slavova in the blog Mobile Market Design for Development. She looks at a recent article “The Cloud, the Crowd, and Public Policy” by Michael Nelson, where Nelson “traces the evolution pf ICTs from Phase 1: standalone devices, through Phase 2: the World Wide Web, to Phase 3: the Cloud.”

So, for the developing world?

Certainly, I do not expect that the evolution of technology innovation in developing countries will necessarily follow the same path as that in the industrialised world. But I find it interesting to consider the possibilities for social, economic and technological development…

Looking at it from this perspective, I think it is fair to say that mobile technology in developing countries is probably in Phase 1 of its development. Other events, such as the use (albeit limited) of GPRS and 3G in developing countries and the availability (also limited) of mobile Internet access in suggest that ICT4D might have reached Phase 2.

The parallel story of the evolution of technology for use in developing countries clearly unfolds at a much greater speed than the evolution and adoption of personal computing in advanced industrialised countries. ICT4Ds are also not developing in isolation from technological and business model solutions aimed at advanced industrial countries, and vice versa.

What happens when we separate ICT4Ds from the general conversation of ICTs? Chris Coward in his blog, second recess, makes a good point that not all technologies aimed at the developing world have to do with capital-D development.

One of the problems with “ICT4D” is that it connotes different things to different people – with most definitions swirling around the application of (primarily digital) ICT to interventions that have an explicit developmental goal such as health, education, government transparency, or others of the sort found in the MDGs. As such, there is a tendency to ignore issues that do not correspond to the conventional development goals (quality of life, games, social movements, etc.), or what might be simply described as any use of ICT in a developing world context…

In order to accommodate a broader scope many people have turned to the term “ICTD,” or ICT and development, to place the emphasis on the phenomenon of ICT use in developing countries, irrespective of whether there is a “developmental” goal or not. Despite the good intentions behind this I’m afraid the nuance is lost on most people so I don’t think it serves our community long term. And, I hate acronyms.

There are other problems too – such as what constitutes “development” and is it meaningful to continue to lump countries into developing or developed buckets (I think not) – but these are topics for another day.

One way to help look at what exactly ICT4Ds are supposed to do, let’s try to view them through the eyes of a computer scientist. Beki70, the author of Beki’s Blog, has a good argument for attempting to co-mingle ICT4D and the ICTs aimed at a market like the United States.

The objective of ICT4D is to solve hard research problems that simultaneously make a difference in the lives of people underserved by ICTs. We don’t measure CS by the good that it’s created for the middle class of America, we measure it by the complexity of the solution.

There is a great debate, she says, within the field of Computer Science over its relationship with ICT4D.

Some participants, i.e. those who come from CS orientations, struggle to answer the question “where’s the Computer Science in ICT4D?” And others list numerous opportunities (to empirically show what the potential might be for areas that span the fields of Computer Science, such as low-cost connectivity, getting content into developing regions via novel networking architectures and caching systems, mobile and low-OS footprint applications, power management, computer vision for detection problems in health).

ICT4D causes me, at least, to reflect on economic impact (which favors those who create successful start-ups since they are likely the only people who can easily draw a line between what they’ve done and how many people have purchased it or use it) as a metric for Computer Science’s impact. Additionally, given the difficulties of finding appropriate measures, I can’t help wondering whether ICT4D is being asked to put the cart before the horse, if we’re learning how to measure productivity gains for computer use in corporate America (who have had computers in place for decades) is it perhaps unrealistic to have well-understood metrics for settings where getting the computer in is going to be a significant first challenge?

Trying to bring this discussion down to earth, let’s look at how the role of ICTs plays out in at least one country. (In my next post, I’ll look at next generation ICT projects aimed at the developing world.) In Sri Lanka, the blogger and ICT activist Sameera Wijerathna investigates what happens when the government and mobile phone operators get the mobile phone wrong. Instead of looking at it as a development tool, they market phones as a convenience.

From the blog Information and Communication Technology for Development.

A recent TV commercial in Sri Lanka shows a girl gets a SMS to her phone and says;
“My boyfriend is sending me SMSs too, even after being on phone with me for hours”
The message from boyfriend: “you are beautiful”
She replies: “you are smart”

Most of the mobile operators in Sri Lanka try to position the mobile phone as a mere tool for Entertainment and Keep In Touch (KIT). They mainly target youth for their marketing campaigns.
This has led to various confusions and disadvantages for both mobile subscribers as well as mobile companies. A negative sentiment has been developed among the people and most of the people, mainly the people at the Bottom of the Pyramid (BoP) do not believe that mobile phone has a positive impact on their lives or livelihoods…
The wrong positioning of mobile phone in Sri Lanka has led to even worst policy decisions such as Government of Sri Lanka banning mobile phones in schools http://ict4d-in-srilanka.blogspot.com/2009/08/sri-lanka-bans-mobile-phones-at-schools.html
So, it is a need of the hour to understand the potential of the mobile phone in Development and position it at the right place. Also it is the time to introduce more and more Value Added Services which goes beyond the entertainment.