I just got back from a very engaging Summit in Panama. Twice a year I get together with my colleagues in international nonprofit organizations and talk about how we can collaborate on technology and bring it out the last 100 kilometers to the most challenged area of the world in which we work. The members organization we formed to do this is Called NetHope (you can read more about it at www.nethope.org .)
The most memorable part of the Summit in Panama was our day of visiting member's programs in the field. This was a life-changing event for me, because it gave me the vision of where we were headed as an organization. Here's the story:
We waited on the shore of a lake not far from the main locks of the Panama Canal. Our group leader called ahead on his cell phone asking a colleague whether the boats had left the village. The morning sun was still low in the sky, but it was hot. Soon two small motor boats appeared around a peninsula of land, chugging through the dense lily-like vegetation that choked the water’s surface. When they arrived, we gingerly climbed into the boats, the last in pushed off and we were heading south.
Our host and program manager, Gary Garriott of Winrock, explained that this was the “road” to San Antonio. There were no services. The villagers were the Wounaan, a small indigenous tribe in rural Panama. Their livelihood was leading tours of their village and the surrounding rain forest. Winrock’s program was providing two PCs and solar-powered Internet connections so the tribe could keep in touch with the local hotels and visitors who left their email addresses. The young elders of the tribe hoped to have a web site to showcase their village, the rain forest and crafts made by their people.
A few of us at a time crowded in the doorway of a small cement structure where two villagers were checking their email on the solar-powered PCs. This was such an amazing sight in the midst of a straw-hut village on stilts in the midst of a rain forest. We learned that a resort hotel on the other side of the lake was providing the antenna. Intel donated the WiFi technology and support, and a local entrepreneur provided the solar panels. The Wounaan village had entered the 21st century.
What struck me most about this program was not that it represented bringing ICT out the last five kilometers to a program area. This was not about connectivity for nonprofit fieldworkers; this was potentially an economically self-sustaining use of technology by and for the village. Connecting with a broader audience of tourists and consumers could mean that this small village could become a much larger virtual village. If we added the web site and ecommerce functions, this was no different than a small business going global via the Internet.
The more I thought about this in the weeks since my trip to Panama, the more I felt that this was the example of where NetHope was headed. We have shown how strong we are in bringing connectivity to places of the world where there are no connections. Our Network Relief Kit (NRK)—now entering its third generation—is an excellent example. Now we can think about bringing the type of technology needed for small villages like San Antonio to enter the stage of the global village.
If we as NetHope are truly to have an impact of the two billion people living on less than $2 a day—the bottom of the pyramid—we need to bring technology to the people a village at a time. What we need is A Village Network Kit and the resources of our collective talent to deliver a VNK that makes us all part of one virtual village.
So in the end, this story became the vision for the strategic direction of NetHope. It is a story I've retold a dozen times. More than anything else we say or do, it is this small story that captures our imagination and communicates the essence of what we are about. |