Lwati June 2005, Number 12

*LWATI *

The monthly e-newsletter of the Southern African
Non-Governmental Organisation Network (SANGONeT)

June 2005, Number 12

www.sangonet.org.za

"Lwati" is an isiSwati word meaning information.

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<> EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR'S COMMENTS
<> EVENTS
<> TECHNOLOGY SERVICES
<> CIVIL SOCIETY INFORMATION SERVICES
<> NETWORKING AND OUTREACH
<> CONTACT DETAILS

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<> EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR'S COMMENTS

Dear reader

Welcome to the twelfth edition of SANGONeT's monthly e-newsletter!

The World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) comprises two phases. The first phase took place in Geneva, Switzerland, from 10-12 December 2003, where 175 countries adopted a Declaration of Principles and Plan of Action. The second phase will take place in Tunis, Tunisia, from 16-18 November 2005.

The Summit is an important event, symbolising the recognition by the global community that ICTs can play a major role in social and economic development and contribute significantly towards poverty alleviation.

To ensure that South African civil society organisations (CSOs) are given opportunities to participate in shaping the South African position in support of the Summit, SANGONeT will host two Thetha forums (29 June 2005 in Braamfontein and another in Cape Town during July) to reflect on the focus and objectives of WSIS and related processes.

An important objective of these meetings will be to discuss and finalise a South African WSIS civil society document. Various South African CSOs involved in ICT issues have contributed to the first draft of the document, which focuses on issues such as local content; community broadcasting; freedom of expression, diversity and pluralism; financing the digital divide; education and ICT literacy; and gender and ICTs.

The draft document will be available on the SANGONeT website by next week.

I would like to encourage CSOs to participate in the two Thetha forums to assist us in refining and finalising the document and/or to forward us comments in this regard. This process also presents CSOs with the opportunity to reflect on related issues such as universal access, telecommunications deregulation, Telkom and the cost of communication, ICT policy and the ICT BEE Charter.

As far as internal issues are concerned, SANGONeT hosted its first Donor Roundtable  on 31 May 2005 in Parktown. We used the event to brief current and prospective donors on our various activities, recent organisational changes and future plans. Similar events will be organised on a regular basis in the future.

Best wishes

David Barnard (dbarnard@sangonet.org.za)

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<> EVENTS

# Thetha - World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) - 29 June 2005

SANGONeT will host a Thetha forum on 29 June 2005 in Braamfontein to provide civil society organisations (CSOs) with the opportunity to reflect on the focus and objectives of WSIS and related processes. It will also create a platform to discuss the position of the South African government and civil society in this regard. A similar meeting will be held in Cape Town during July 2005.

The Thetha will be held at the Parktonian Hotel, 120 De Korte Street, Braamfontein.

If you are interested in participating in this workshop, please contact Refilwe Rakhibane or Malefu Thibedi at SANGONeT before 27 June 2005:

Tel: (011) 403-4935 / Fax: (011) 403-0130

E-mail: thetha@sangonet.org.za / refilwe@sangonet.org.za

For more information on this Thetha, please visit the SANGONeT website at http://www.sangonet.org.za

# Thusanang Focus Group Discussion - 29 June 2005

SANGONeT's Thusanang team will host its next focus group discussion on 29 June 2005 in Durban.

The aim of the focus group discussions isto provide civil society stakeholders with the opportunity to critique and inform the content on the Thusanang website, as well as the work of SANGONeT's Civil Society Information Services Programme in general.

For more information about these meetings, please contact Diane Babak at SANGONeT before 27 June 2005:

Tel: (011) 403-4935 / Fax: (011) 403-0130 E-mail: diane@sangonet.org.za

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<> TECHNOLOGY SERVICES

# ICT Support for NGOs in Braamfontein

A one-day workshop was held on 17 May 2005 on 'ICT Support for NGOs in Braamfontein' and was attended by 41 delegates from NGOs in and around Braamfontein.

The workshop was held to assess the ICT support needs of the NGO sector and to reflect on a proposed strategy to support NGOs in this regard with the assistance of students at the Wits School of Computer Science.

Participants at the workshop highlighted the need for routine ICT support, while emphasizing that capacity building should be the long term goal of technology assistance provided to NGOs.

For more information on the outcomes of the workshop, please contact Joseph George on Tel: (011) 403-4935 or joseph@sangonet.org.za

# Thetha - Using Creative Commons to Licence Publicly-funded Knowledge

SANGONeT and the Association for Progressive Communications (APC) hosted a Thetha forum on 24 May 2005 to discuss whether Southern African organisations should use Creative Commons to licence the information that they produce.

Creative Commons is an innovative non-profit that has developed a set of licences that people can use to mark the conditions under which their content can be copied, distributed and shared. Some of these conditions include reproduction for non-commercial or commercial use, and the publication of derivative works.

Speakers included David Barnard, Executive Director, SANGONeT; Anriette Esterhuysen, Executive Director, Association for Progressive Communications; Lawrence Lessig, Creative Commons Chairman and Stanford Law Professor; Andrew Rens, Creative Commons South Africa and Heather Ford, Creative Commons South Africa.

For more information on the Thetha, please visit http://www.sangonet.org.za

# User Administration Training, Agenda Feminist Media Project

A training workshop on website user administration was conducted for Agenda Feminist Media Project in Durban. The training included posting and editing of content, setting up interactive polls, image placing and using a Content Management System.

For more information on Agenda, please visit http://www.agenda.org.za

# South African Communist Party (SACP) Web Portal

SANGONeT signed a contract to build and maintain a comprehensive web portal for the South African Communist Party (SACP). The portal will encompass SACP-affiliated institutions and will be a gateway to any information relating to the party and affiliated organisations. The portal will be launched in June 2005.

# Central Case Management System for Paralegal Advice Offices

The Technology Services programme conducted on-site training sessions on the live Central Case Management System (CCMS) at various locations in South Africa for paralegal organisations, including the National Community-Based Paralegal Association (NCBPA) in Johannesburg, Community Law and Rural Development Centre (CLRDC) in Durban, Black Sash in Cape Town, Social Change Assistance Trust (SCAT) in Cape Town and Karoo Centre for Human Rights (KCHR) in Beauford West.

A one-day joint stakeholder workshop was held on 30 May 2005 to chart the way forward for the next phase of the project.

A closed and threaded discussion forum was also implemented on the CCMS website to allow for electronic posting of topics for discussion.

For more information on this project, please visit http://www.ccms.org.za

# NGO.ZA

The NGO.ZA initiative has proved to be very popular and SANGONeT continues to receive various enquiries about additional services. Accordingly, the NGO.ZA initiative is being expanded to accommodate a multi-stakeholder structure, including a wider range of ICT service providers. This will allow for a number of additional ICT services and products to be offered to NGOs at competitive rates.

For more information on NGO.ZA, please visit http://ww.ngo.za

# Technology Services

For more information on how SANGONeT could assist you with a wide range of technology solutions, please contact Joseph George on Tel: (011) 403-4935 or joseph@sangonet.org.za

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<> CIVIL SOCIETY INFORMATION SERVICES

# Thusanang: The Southern African Funding Information Facility

Thusanang is an Internet portal (http://www.thusanang.org.za) that aims to disseminate information on funding and fundraising issues, promoting good grantmaking and grantseeking practices.

The Thusanang team launched a short weekly e-newsletter during May 2005, titled "Thusanang Alert". The alert informs subscribers about new postings on the website, including new vacancies, conferences and training opportunities, calls for proposals and general news and views related to non-profit sustainability and development funding. Should you wish to subscribe to this newsletter, please send an e-mail to
thusanang@sangonet.org.za, with the words "Subscribe me to Thusanang Alert"in the subject line.

During May 2005 the Thusanang notice board also started highlighting information about important development dates, for example, "Child Protection Week". Each  announcement is linked to additional information about the significance of the event.

The Thusanangteam hosted a successful focus group discussion on 17 May 2005 inCape Town with the support of theNon-Profit Consortium. The meeting was attended by leading Cape Town NGOs working in the development arena that used the opportunity to critique the website within the context of development funding. The Thusanang team will
host the next focus group meeting on 29June 2005 in Durban. A full report of all focus group discussions will be posted on the Thusanang website after the Durbanmeeting.

For more information about Thusanang, please visit http://www.thusanang.org.za

# PRODDER: The South African NGO and Development Database

The development of the PRODDER database is taking place at a rapid
pace.Organisations wishing to submit their details to the database are encouraged to submit an e-mail  enquiry to prodder@sangonet.org.za. The PRODDER team will e-mail a short 3-pageinput sheet to you, which you can either e-mailor fax back to SANGONeT. If your NGO has a
website, it will automatically be includedin our "South African NGOs on the Web" list, which is a listing of NGO websites compiled under the auspices of the PRODDER project and published on the SANGONeT website. Currently, the alphabetical list comprises morethan 350 NGO websites.

For more information about PRODDER, please contact Julie Machin on Tel: (011) 403- 4935 or julie@sangonet.org.za

# SANGONeT Conference Calendar

A new feature on the SANGONeT website is a comprehensive listing of forthcoming Southern African and international development conferences.

To have your event included in this facility, please forward details to
info@sangonet.org.za

For more information about forthcoming conferences, please visit the "Conference Calendar" section on the SANGONeT website at http://www.sangonet.org.za

# SN-Announce

SN-Announce is an electronic mailing list that has provided an invaluable service to the CSO sector in Southern Africa for the past six years.  With a potential readership of more than 10 000 people, it remains one of the most cost-effective and efficient ways to reach non-profit organisations, development practitioners, academics, researchers, unions, grantmakers, and others working in the development sector.

All members of the development sector, including government departments and commercial organisations with a development focus, can advertise on SN-Announce. The type of information distributed on SN-Announce includes alerts for vacancies, events, campaign launches, conferences, meetings, lobbies, petitions and services
in the development sector.

For more information about how to subscribe to SN-Announce or post an  announcement, please contact Refilwe Rakhibane at SANGONeT on (011) 403-4935 or refilwe@sangonet.org.za

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<> NETWORKING AND OUTREACH

# Thusanang and PRODDER jointly exhibited at the SAIF Biennial Convention that was held from 18-20 May 2005 in Cape Town. Diane Babak gave delegates a tour of the Thusanang website, while Julie Machin demonstrated the search capabilities of the soon to be released PRODDER database.

Also at the SAIF Convention, SANGONeT's Deputy Director, Fazila Farouk, who is responsible for the organisation's Civil Society Information Services Programme, gave a presentation about trends in online fundraising.

# Thusanang's Senior Information Coordinator, Diane Babak, attended the "Commons- sense: Towards an African Digital Information Commons" conference from 25-27 May 2005 in Rosebank.

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<> CONTACT DETAILS

SANGONeT
P O Box 31392
2017 Braamfontein
SOUTH AFRICA

10th Floor
76 Juta Street
Braamfontein

Tel: (+27) (11) 403-4935
Fax: (+27) (11) 403-0130
E-mail: newsletter@sangonet.org.za
WWW: http://www.sangonet.org.za

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CopyLeft. 2005. SANGONeT.

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