Ungana-Afrika News
Read what's been happening at Ungana-Afrika!
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Appearances in the Media.
03.2008 Ungana-Afrika Supports FDC's ICT Capacity Building of HIV/AIDS Organisations Workshop in Maputo
FDC (Foundation for Community Development) hosted
an ICT Capacity Building workshop for HIV/AIDS NGOs that took place on
the 5th - 6th March 2006 in Maputo Province, Mozambique. The workshop,
attended by staff members with low computer skills from 8 NGOs, was
focused at training participants on office applications (word,
spreadsheets & presentation) and introducing them to FLOSS (Free
and Open Source Software). The same workshop will be run in Xai-Xai
province in April.
As a followup to the workshop Ivan Carrilho, the FDC eRider, will visit
each of the organisations to ensure that the skills learned are
practically applied in daily activities of the NGOs. Ivan will also
provide further ICT support to the organisations during his visit.
Tshepo Thlaku from Ungana-Afrika was involved in the development of
content and facilitation of the workshop.
07.2007 Ungana-Afrika
Projects Expand into Malawi
Workshop facilitators in Malawi
As a part of our Incubation Program efforts,
Ungana-Afrika has started project implementations in Malawi (more
details of this regional program also highlighted in a recent press
release and the incubation workshops and feasibilities project
page).
Malawi efforts began when Ungana-Afrika
hosted an
Incubation of ICT Capacity Building Programs workshop on the 26-27 June
2007 in Lilongwe, Malawi. The workshop attracted about 25 civil society
organisations, universities and consultants from various parts of
Malawi, and was organized in partnership with Young Advocates for the
Advancement of ICT-related Development (Y.A.A.ICT-D).
The aim of the workshop was to introduce participants to the concept of
eRiding as a community driven support model addressing ICT challenges
often faced by networks of development organisations, and to take the
participants through practical steps of constructing a customized
eRiding projects based on the needs from the different environments. On
the second day the workshop hosted a guest speaker, Soyapi Mumba from
Malawi Open Source Society (MOSS), who gave a presentation on the
concepts and principles of FLOSS, highlighting its pros and cons, and
the relevance to non-profit organisations.
After this successful workshop several
organisations considering to implement projects based on the eRiding
model have contacted Ungana-Afrika for further support.
03.2007
2007 Marks Official
Launch of Several Exciting New Projects
The
quality outcomes from recent projects have proven Ungana-Afrika to be a
trusted partner within the ICT4D sector. During the last months
Ungana-Afrika has been able to successfully finish several funding and
contract negotiations with all our core supporters and customers. These
projects (focusing on incubation and support of eRiding initiatives,
opportunities of mobile technologies, and supporting rural paralegals
in South Africa to access relevant information) will keep Ungana-Afrika
staff busy for the next few months with some contracts lasting until
the end of 2009.
04.2005 - 03.2006 Replicable Projects and
Concepts Take Root
The fiscal year 2006 will be remembered for
the clear shift from
internal organisational development to external program implementation.
Landmarks included:
2005
"Incubation of ICT Capacity Building Program" Implementation locations
in Southern Africa
- Big results from the "Incubation of
ICT
Capacity Building Program" with 3 regional workshops (in South
Africa, Mozambique and Zambia), 2 eRider training programs (in South
Africa and Senegal) and direct program support for several new ICT
programs (in Zambia and West Africa).
- Ungana-Afrika continued its work
with South Africa Community Radio (via a new year-long ICT support
project)
- Publication of several new
resources within the ICT support community (including a Strategic
Technology Planning Guide and eRider training program/materials).
- Direct technology planning services
for several sectors of Southern Africa civil society (including
regional paralegal advice offices and gender groups)
The hard work of the team was rewarded
during the year when Ungana-Afrika was
announced as the Dirk Award winner, and later, the winner of
an APC membership award.
11.2005 Participarion and WSIS
We
are presenting our projects and ICT support concepts at the World
Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) in Tunis.
Ungana-Afrika representatives Toni Eliasz and Rudi von Staden are part
of the APC member community delegation, and are availalbe for all
questions and comments throughout the week.
11.2004 New
Service: Incubation of ICT Capacity Building Programs
Ungana-Afrika is currently seeking partner
networks, interest groups and other supporters who would like to bring
the benefits of ICT into specific oganisational groups throughout
Southern Africa.
A service launched in November, 2004 by
Ungana-Afrika, entitled "Incubation of ICT Capacity Building Programs,"
will combine the innovation and mobility of the eRiding support model,
with the strength and scale found in existing development networks. The
aim of this effort is to incubate and implement new technology capacity
building programs within existing organisational networks of Southern
Africa. These programs can help collaborative network structures, and
individual non-profits within, to employ technology to better
accomplish their missions.
3.2004. Ungana-Afrika Registers as an Independent
Non-profit Organisation
Tshepo
and Thale working in the new Ungana-Afrika office
On March 19th, 2004 Ungana-Afrika held
its first General Meeting in which an organisational constitution was
ratified. This marks the transformation of Ungana-Afrika from a project
partnership (between OSISA and AIESEC) into independent non-profit
organisation in South Africa. This change will afford Ungana-Afrika
additional flexibility in scale, governance and management.
Ungana-Afrika
still draws upon the strong support of OSISA and AIESEC.
11.2003 -
07.2004. New Projects in South Africa
While evaluating our
pilot phase,
and developing our strategy for future, Ungana-Afrika didn't stop
working on-the-ground with NGOs. During late 2003 and early 2004,
Ungana-Afrika has been hard at work with several local projects.
Inside the studio of a community
radio client in rural South Africa
Under the
support of Open Society Foundation South Africa (OSF), Ungana-Afrika
teamed up with the National Community Radio Forum (NCRF) of South
Africa to provide ICT support to its members. During this time,
Ungana-Afrika provided technology assessment and planning services to 5
provincial hub stations.
Ungana-Afrika
was also involved in a collaboration between Open Society Institute,
and EngenderHealth to help develop new software tools for HIV/AIDS
organisations in the developing world. These organisations are working
on an active research project to determine the usefulness of a clinic
patient management software tool. In the past tools have been developed
for the sector with very little involvement of the actual
organisational users. With this research, we hope to build bridges
between the health, developer and funder community to build a useful
tool that meets users' needs.
10.2003.
eRiding Success Stories from the Pilot
The Ungana-Afrika initiative has recently
completed a six-month pilot phase in Southern Africa. Now it's time to
look back and evaluate our accomplishments as we expand and plan for
the future. The goal of this six month pilot was to introduce the
eRiding model of IT consulting to the African NGO environment and to
customize it to this unique context. This pilot proved that there is a
great niche for an eRiding initiative in southern Africa, as NGO
response was overwhelming, and the demand for our services was much
greater than our initial capacity.
During this six-month
period, Ungana-Afrika started providing customized ICT services to NGOs
in 6 countries within southern Africa. Though these
services were always client specific, the greatest demands were often
for skills training and capacity building:
- 117 participants
received formal training in computer operations,
office productivity tools, Internet use etc.
- 15 major
implementation and development projects were
completed including: backup policy implementation, network setup,
formal technology plan development, website strategy development etc.
- Formal infrastructure and
staff skill assessments and recommendations finalized for a
majority of client organisations
Toni
and Andrea working in Zimbabwe during the pilot
As a result of
the positive feedback and great demand, Ungana-Afrika is determined to
continue providing ICT support and eRiding services in southern Africa.
Moreover, we are currently redesigning and greatly expanding our pilot
strategy to meet the needs of a much larger number of NGOs. This new
model will employ a scalable strategy that promises to achieve more
measurable results with less time than isolated and individual projects.
Looking for a more historical background of Ungana-Afrika? Please see
the news archive
and History
pages.
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