Hi, I invite help to create software and hardware to better include those with Marginal Internet Access.  Andrius Kulikauskas

 

Here's a proposal that we submitted in the Summer.  How could we improve it?  I would like to emphasize the linking of East Europe and East Africa.  Also, I'm asking Sasha Mrkailo of Serbia to lead it and submit it instead of me.  And I'm asking him to include 1000 USD for Zenonas Anusauskas of http://www.kaimotv.lt because he needs a faster computer for video editing and I think he would be a great help and also his sons could do some software programming.

 

Sharing Deepest Values

 

Why are you seeking Rising Voices funding? How will your project benefit the community you are targeting? (100 words)

 

I wish to build on our Minciu Sodas laboratory's successes in organizing independent thinkers in Africa and around the world. Samwel Kongere in rural Kenya and others have learned my approach of engaging people to learn their deepest values in life so that we might support them directly. They are organizing locally and we would like to formulate these ideas in local languages where they are active such as in Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Cameroon, Nigeria, Palestine, India. Maria Agnese Giraudo and Chris Macrae have also provided them with video cameras and digital cameras and I wish us to pioneer the global optimizing of the flow of media for publishing online and CDs. In particular, I wish to optimize our lab's system of discussion groups, wiki, chat, stories, feeds to add video and audio and yet include and accommodate those with marginal Internet access who mostly work offline.

 

 

What kinds of news, stories, information and other content will your project provide? Describe your vision for the content. (250 words)

 

I have found it especially helpful to ask people: What is their deepest value in life which includes all of their other values? (We have collected about 300 answers so far, all aspects of love.) What is a question that they don't know the answer to, but wish to answer? (We have collected about 150 such investigatory questions.) What is it they they wish to accomplish? (We have a diagram of about 100 endeavors, all ultimately supporting the reaching out to the hardest to reach.) The content would first of all document these interviews and conversations. They would help us recognize and focus our attention on those people who know themselves and are profoundly mature independent thinkers. We can then help them on the ground to participate in our global network and organize around their inquiries. Our 20 working groups are based on our leader's deepest values and they include: Global Villages, Learning From Each Other, Holistic Helping, Fighting Peacefully, Participatory Society, Ecological Architecture, Loving God, Living by Truth, Social Agriculture, Motivation, New Craft, Being Connected to Oneself. My goal is to optimize the flow of media so that we might engage each other on the most profound levels. This includes the use of all channels as appropriate and also the funding of small projects on the ground as we have been doing. I wish to perfect this flow.

 

 

Who will generate the content? Who is the target audience? How, and how often, will it be distributed? What language(s) will it be available in? (300 words)

 

Our target audience is independent thinkers. My dream is to publish CDs in the PublicDomain - one per independent thinker - overviewing their life work. This might include a 1 hour video bridge with them, perhaps a dozen short video clips, maybe 10 hours of audio interviews, the archives of the discussions they participate in, the wikis they participate in, all of their writings, a gallery of photographs, hundreds of Wikipedia articles relevant to their thinking, and their recommended books. This would allow a person with a computer but working offline to immerse themselves in their thinking in very deep ways and then to respond! and contribute stories, wiki pages, interviews, research and so on.

We think in terms of relationships rather than content. Our global network has 150 active participants, 1,500 supportive, and is currently generating 25 letters per day of which 4 letters per day are from Africa and another 6 letters per day are from people dedicated to helping Africa. We are making more use of our wiki and customizing it with metadata. We are ready to start making 2 or 3 minute YouTube video clips from Africa. We also are pursuing Franz Nahrada's dream of global villages based on video bridge technology and so that is a direction that we're heading in. Our greatest success so far is on the ground in Africa and so I want to make our basic ideas of IndependentThinking available in local languages, such as Samwel Kongere's Lou in western Kenya, so that people might then participate in the languages which they are most creative in.

 

 

What kinds of participation and interaction do you expect from the readers/listeners/viewers of your content? How will you encourage participation? (75 words)

 

Now that we have video equipment on the ground in Kenya and Uganda I would like to optimize the sharing of information so that, for example, when Samwel Kongere films videos onto DVDs in Rusinga Island, he might then mail them to Serbia, where Sasha Mrkailo might edit them and upload them onto the Internet. Or digital photos taken in rural Nigeria or rural Cameroon might likewise make their way, along with captions, to Pamela McLean in London where she or Lorraine Duff might put them up at our wiki or at MyFoodStory. And in Africa they might go to an Internet cafe with their flash sticks and directly download all of our latest letters and wiki pages so they might read them on computers at home, and upload their responses. Or they might ask for us to mail them CDs with the works of independent thinkers for them to study so they might engage us.

 

 

What is your knowledge of your target community? Why are you the best individual/organization to lead this project? Do you have prior experience in citizen media outreach? (100 words)

 

Our target community is IndependentThinkers and we have served them since 1998. By focusing on our deepest values and our shared value of CaringAboutThinking we are able to attract and hold together over the years an exceptionally wide variety of people. We have one of the most vibrant networks in Africa with both global and local connections. Our approach of engaging each other squarely regarding our values is greatly appreciated. Our teams for My Food Story collected 400 stories on the ground and 1600 excerpts on the Internet.

 

 

Describe what technologies and tools your project will use to produce the content What kinds of technical skills and expertise do you bring to the project? What are your technical needs? (100 words)

 

I program in PHP, Perl, Python and other web languages. We use an eclectic mix of low tech sites including Yahoo Groups, RSS, ProWiki, ARSC, and we'll be making use of YouTube. It would be great to get help from custom programmers. There are many customizations that would help enormously to link our high-bandwidth and low-bandwidth worlds.

 

 

How will you measure and evaluate your project's impact on your main participants? other contributors? on the larger community? How many participants do you expect to be involved in your project? How will you seek and sustain their involvement? (200 words)

 

Our project will have succeeded if we write down our approach, translate it to local languages and then find that independent thinkers who don't even know English are emboldened to likewise organize locally in their own languages. It will have succeeded if it catalyzes support for our projects that pair together investigators online and on the ground, and if it illustrates them through YouTube so that we get more paid work. It will have succeeded if we have cases where an offline thinker is able to respond in helpful ways to an online thinker.

 

 

What challenges do you expect to face, and how do you plan to overcome them? (200 words)

 

A great challenge will be learning how to work with video in a way that is not time intensive. I expect it is important to think consciously about the format - for example, think of video in terms what can be done with a 2 or 3 minute clip - so that we need to do as little reviewing or editing as possible. Another challenge is teaching how to use unfamiliar technology (like wikis) when we're not physically present together. Sasha Mrkailo of Serbia is manning our chat channel and, despite great obstacles, is succeeding in teaching Tanzanian youth to create wiki pages. Another challenge is learning to know yourself and speak truthfully about yourself, but here we seem to have succeeded.

 

 

How do you plan to sustain your project's content after the Rising Voices funding has ended? Detail specific plans. How do you plan to raise revenue to continue your efforts in the future? (300 words)

 

We "work for free" as a way of demonstrating that we are able to relate in such a way, and this let us work together at paid work with confidence in each other. We are working for each other and for clients such as Greg Wolff for whom we did a total of $24,000 to start up My Food Story. (I received roughly half and our team the other half, about 100 people in all, distributed fractally.) Because we are able to establish such principled relationships, we can conduct successful projects in increments of 125 USD with people who we have never even met! Currently we might organize 1,000 people for 150,000 USD and I'm finding interest among tech firms (such as a maker of Skype phones) in this ability and what it means in "emerging markets". Other prospects include Steve Bosserman, an agricultural knowledge broker who leads our Social Agriculture working group and wishes us globally to catalyze local momentum for independent thinkers in Columbus, Ohio to converge around the issue of localization (especially the business opportunities in interrelating energy, architecture, community and agriculture). We might create for Rick Nelson a Global Villages Index by which hubs for co-working might self-rank themselves.

 

 

What resources and support can Rising Voices provide to your project to ensure its success? (200 words)

 

Please fund work at our laboratory and encourage others likewise. I organize our work fractally for maximum sustainability, impact and inclusion. Also, please encourage work in the Public Domain as much as possible and recognize the limitations of both copyright and copyleft. Please work transparently - I encourage you to conduct your grant process completely openly so that all might see all of the proposals and engage each other and learn from the comments. Please let us engage your "losers" so that they might participate in our networks if they like and find alternate ways to pursue their endeavors. Please recommend us to open source programmers who might respond to our needs for custom programming.

 

 

Detail a specific budget of up to $5,000 for two years of operating costs. Applicants are encouraged to submit budgets for less than the maximum $5,000 as smaller grants allow us to fund more projects. Hosting fees and curriculum resources will be provided by Rising Voices and therefore need not be included as budget expenses. Potential costs might include hardware, internet access, workshop costs, translation, travel, and coordinator expenses.

 

Last month I personally dedicated 1200 USD for Maria Agnese Giraudo to help her buy equipment that she has distributed to our participants in Kenya and Uganda. She has contributed even more and Chris Macrae has been likewise generous. Our team on the ground has video equipment and also I have provided them with various paid work.

 

My greatest need is work for myself. The stronger I am, the more I am able to help others. I ask for a grant of 2000 USD that i might dedicate more energy to optimizing our media flow and supporting our efforts for outreach on the ground. Your recognition would also be a great help for our lab as we look for work and connect with others. My own role is key as the architect who is most sensitive to all of the above issues and can respond as an organizer and as an interface developer. For this money I could work part-time for 2 months, or more likely, stretch that out over a year or two.

 

Next, I ask for 4 grants of 250 USD that we might support 4 people who could experiment with the role they might play as video editors. Most of our participants in Africa have abominable Internet access and many don't have computers or the range of skills. My strategy is to have them capture the images but to distribute the editing to places like Serbia, Lithuania, India or Mexico where there are high-bandwith connections and lower wage scales and less incentive than in the US is needed for people to take the time to do this work and learn these skills. For this money they might work part-time for a month or two.

 

Finally, I ask for 8 grants of 100 USD (plus 25 USD for transfer fees) for assistants in the field who would identify and serve offline independent thinkers - often elderly people - so that their ideas might make it to the online world in various forms - text, photo, audio, video - by whatever means they work out - overcoming barriers of language, computers, culture - so that our video editors might present the material and then circulate back a response, so that there is a feedback loop. They will translate material in local languages as needed so that the independent thinker might participate and we engage each other. For this money the assistant might work part-time for a month or two, pay for Internet access and travel as needed.

 

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