Most of the community initiatives working to address the digital divide not only deploy their own networks, drawing on a strong commitment to their people’s needs and hopes, but are also increasingly pushing for the improvement of conditions for their sustainability within the internet ecosystem.
This newsletter features some of the crucial advancements that brought together a range of stakeholders such as governments, regulators, the private sector, academy representatives and others in order to deepen their understanding of grassroots realities and to influence their perspectives on the governance, management and promotion of community-driven strategies to connect the a third of earth’s population that is still unconnected.
Welcome to the 73th monthly round-up of developments impacting your local access networks and community-based initiatives.
Routing for Communities podcast
While we await a new series of episodes of the Routing for Communities podcast, we invite you to visit these experiences that follow the road to achieving connectivity for communities, addressing their unique realities collectively.
From the Asia-Pacific region, we have the sixth episode of the first season of the Routing for Communities podcast, featuring the experience of the Common Room Networks Foundation, an organisation that works with art, culture, communication and new technologies that helped build the community network in Ciptagelar Traditional Village, in West Java. Listen to it here.
And in the 11th episode you can learn about TakNet, Thailand’s first community network, which connects around 500 homes in 30 communities to broadband. Listen to it here. Both these experiences were showcased at the Asia-Pacific Telecommunity (APT) Forum held in Chiang Mai, about which you will learn more in this newsletter.
You can also find other experiences from different countries around the world in the 12 episodes that comprised the first season of this podcast. The Routing for Communities podcast is available on this page, and also on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
New episodes are on the way to share more of the incredible interviews.
Community networks news and stories
- This year's edition of the APT Forum saw the participation of APC members and representatives of the LocNet initiative in two thematic sessions developed with the Information Security Operations Center (ISOC), “Connectivity Catalysts: Advancing Access with Complementary Solutions”. The second session saw a group discussion with regulators and representatives from industry. Read more.
- “Internet governance spaces like Asia-Pacific Regional Internet Governance Forum (APrIGF) must prioritise community-centred connectivity much more,” said Gomer Padong from the Institute for Social Entrepreneurship in Asia (ISEA) and coordinator of policy and regulations in Asia for the LocNet initiative, of this year's edition that was held in Taiwan. Read more.
- In Colombia, Colnodo, the civil society organisation (CSO) and APC member, is celebrating three decades of work committed to the digital inclusion of local communities and building synergies with the entire ecosystem that supports community-centred connectivity initiatives in the region and around the world. Learn more about them and their anniversary celebration here.
- In Nigeria, the Fantsuam Foundation held its Wireless Barefoot Engineers’ training, enabling 27 participants to learn more setting up and maintaining a community network. The project comprised community consultations, and classroom and field-based training to help participants practise the concepts learned in this course. Read more.
- And celebrations continue! In México, Redes AC is celebrating its 20th anniversary by sharing 20 memorable moments of their history in the words of their members. They put together a selection of actions that defined years of commitment to help rural and Indigenous communities incorporate information and communication technologies in their lives. Follow #20añosaCOMPAñando on their social media for more.
- The 10th meeting on Communication and Rurality was held in Salta, Argentina, on 30 and 31 August 2024 where Peter Bloom from Rhizomatica coordinated a space addressing the theme of resilience for community networks and media. Read more about it here.
- Argentinian CSO Altermundi has an invitation to participate in the development of LibreLoom, an innovative network device for indoor Wi-Fi and fibre optics compatible with the operation of free and decentralised community networks. Read more.
- The Local Access and Community Networks (LocNet) initiative opened a call for gender policy consultant/s to work on Gender Integration in Policy and Regulation for community-centred connectivity. Those interested in applying please check the terms of reference here.
Gendered experiences
- Women of all ages and backgrounds gathered at Pabbo Youth ICT Centre, in Uganda, for a digital literacy training programme facilitated by 48 Percent and BOSCO. They celebrated, learned and shared their curiosity to unlock the potential of the digital world. Read more.
- Technology-facilitated gender-based violence (TFGBV) has been a worrisome phenomenon for some years now. Shared Research Agenda is a report recently launched by the Sexual Violence Research Initiative in partnership with APC, UN Women, and the Global Partnership to End Online Abuse and Harassment. The report is a valuable tool to address and prevent gender violence facilitated by technology. Available online in several languages (English, Spanish, French and Arabic, among others). Find it here.
Enabling policy and regulation
The Global Digital Compact process – developed as an Annex to the Pact for the Future – was endorsed by the UN General Assembly last weekend. It includes the commitment to invest in "local network initiatives" as part of its first objective to "close all digital divides and accelerate progress across the sustainable development goals". Find the entire document here.
In Argentina, Altermundi participated in a meeting with the cooperative affairs and communications committee of their national legislature, to request continuance of threatened public financing policies for community networks operating in unconnected areas, especially where telecom operators do not want to invest. Read the thread here.
Publications, research and toolkits
- As ground-up models increasingly emerge as a solution to digital inclusion, this article, written by Michael Jensen and Adriana Labardini, advances the definition of a new paradigm on community-centred connectivity, exploring the value of community networks, and the policies needed for them to thrive. The article will be published in two parts. Read the first here.
- Paradigm Initiative, working in Africa, has published a comprehensive report culled from the Digital Rights and Inclusion Forum 2024, which includes a useful compilation of community recommendations to all stakeholders within the digital rights and technology policy space. Find it here.
- Find out how the arrival of connectivity through low-orbit Starlink satellites is changing the Amazon region. Tech lawyer Ronaldo Lemos travelled up the Rio Negro for this episode of the video series Expresso Futuro, “Os rios e as redes”. Watch it here.
Events
- The Institute for Social Entrepreneurship in Asia (ISEA) invites you to join an online learning session, “Model building of Community Networks linked to Social Enterprise and Local Economic Development”, on 30 September 2024. Don’t miss it! Register here.
- A side event at CSTD 2024-2025, co-organised by APC and the Internet Society, proposed an intersessional panel, “Exploring innovative financing mechanisms for community-centred connectivity: A WSIS+20 agenda to leave no one behind”. Read more.
- The Latin American and Caribbean Internet Governance Forum (LACIGF) will take place in a hybrid format on 7 and 8 November 2024 in Santiago, Chile, with special sessions devoted to community connectivity and digital inclusion. Read more. [Available in Spanish.]
- The Workshop for Latin America and the Caribbean (WALC) will take place online from 11 to 15 November 2024, and will include a track on community networks. Registration is already open. Read more. [Available in Spanish.]
- Registration is open for this year’s Community Network Xchange (CNX), happening on 15 and 16 November 2024. This edition’s theme is “Building Communities for Rights to Access and Access to Rights”. Read more.
- This year’s edition of the Association for Women's Rights in Development (AWID) International Forum is happening in Bangkok, Thailand, and online from 2 to 5 December 2024. Read more.
- The Green Tech Hackathon will be held on 10 and 11 December 2024 in Amsterdam in a hybrid format. It proposes to develop tools, policies and protocols to reduce the environmental impact of the internet infrastructure. Read more.
- The 19th global Internet Governance Forum (IGF), which will take place under the theme "Building our Multi-Stakeholder Digital Future", will be held from 15 to 19 December 2024 in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Read more.
- RightsCon 2025 will be held in Taipei and online from 24 to 27 February 2025. Registrations are now open. Read more.
Funding opportunities
- Community networks in Kenya are invited to participate in a call for a fellowship programme on Community-Centric Approaches to Planning, Design and Deployment of Fibre Infrastructure, launched by APC, Rhizomatica and Tanda Community Network, in partnership with the African Advanced Level Telecommunications Institute (AFRALTI). Deadline to apply is round the corner: 30 September 2024. Read more.
- The NGI0 non-profit coalition support for open source, open data, open hardware and open standards projects is still open, providing financial and practical support for mentoring, testing, security tests, accessibility, dissemination and so on. Funding opportunities through calls for projects are available here.
Community networks learning repository
This repository is a collective online space to store and exchange resources that can be useful in training processes focused on materials made for and by community networks. In this issue, we invite you to search the repository for the several resources available, ranging from those that focus on community participation on governance and multistakeholder instances in a particular country, to others with a more global approach like the recent article from the Global Information Society Watch.
And last but not least, we would also like to invite you to upload and share editions or learning reports to reach stakeholders of information and communication technologies ecosystem in our collective effort to bridge the digital divide.
Send us your community networks updates
This newsletter is part of the Local Networks (LocNet) initiative, a collective effort led by APC and Rhizomatica in partnership with people and organisations in Africa, Asia and Latin America and the Caribbean, aiming to directly support community networks and to contribute to an enabling ecosystem for their emergence and growth. The newsletter was supported by Canada's International Development Research Centre (IDRC) in 2017/2018 and funded by the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida) from 2019 to 2023.
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September 2024. Association for Progressive Communications (APC).