New Concepts and Mechanisms for Networking Edo Stork, Deputy Resident Representative, United Nations Development Programme, Trinidad and Tobago Vidyaratha Kissoon, Devnet, Guyana Fifth Summit of the Americas Civil Society Forum, 15 April 2009 (with additional edits in the Notes)

Outline Case Studies – Sustainable Development Networking Programme – Caribbean ICT Virtual Stakeholder Community (CIVIC ) Success factors

About UNDP UNDP is the UN's global development network, an organization advocating for change and connecting countries to knowledge, experience and resources to help people build a better life.

Sustainable Development Networking Programme (SDNP) * Emerged from Agenda 21 endorsed by over 185 national governments in UNCED, Rio de Janeiro 1992: Launched in late 1992, ended in 2002 * Support to chapter 40 of the Agenda: Information for decision makers and stakeholders to support sustainable development * Active in almost 50 countries, 10 or so projects still operate independently from UNDP (as NGOs or foundations) Projects in OAS countries: Colombia, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Guatemala, Guyana, Haiti, Honduras, Jamaica, Mexico, Nicaragua – Colombia - – Guyana - – Haiti - – Honduras - – Jamaica -

SDNP – Critical Success Factors Focus on Connectivity, Capacity and Content (the 3 Cs!), not only ICTs Participatory/multi-stakeholder approach in project implementation Sustainability built into the project from day 1 Links to national sustainable development priorities Public access points and training Use of Open Source Software to reduce costs, build national ICT capacity

SDNP – Lessons learnt Access to information via ICTs is not only feasible but needed to foster better sustainable development Increased awareness on the use of ICTs by NGOs and civil society in general - they are usually ahead of governments Building national capacity and national and international networks is essential to guarantee some level of success A pure technological approach can kill any initiative rapidly as technologies evolve very quickly Successful SDNPs required support of dedicated and committed national staff and managers who fully owned the operation and work independently from the donor

SDN Honduras Launched in 1993 with 200USD on a multi stakeholder platform including national government Quickly moved from providing connectivity to becoming an information center for civil society and development NGOs Played key role when Hurricane Mitch hit the country in Provided critical training not only on ICTs but also on sustainable development issues and programme design Become an independent NGO in 2001 and is still running as such with support from many donors and local partners

SDN Honduras This slide was edited to remove the image of the portal to make a smaller filesize

Caribbean ICT Virtual Stakeholders Community (CIVIC) Formed after Caribbean ICT Roundtable in October 2002 Support from the Institute for Connectivity in the Americas/International Development Research Centre ( ) Currently a multi sectoral, regional virtual community of 300 persons from 30 countries Details of supporting project at – Partnership includes SDN participants from Guyana, Haiti and Jamaica and Fundación Taigüey from Dominican Republic

CIVIC – How do we use ICTs Dgroups platform – Mailing list – Resource directory for members

CIVIC – In implementation CIVIC 2.0 Platform – Starting with thematic channels – Channel managers have been trained – Multilingual (French, Spanish and English) – Based on Drupal CMS – Various applications available mailing list/ forums integration blogs in the first phase Resource sharing

Demonstration CIVIC 2.0 Platform This slide was edited to remove an image to make a smaller file size

Success factors What are the tools which are available? How do we ensure that we do not exclude persons who are not familiar with the technology? How accessible is the technology? – Bandwidth quality, electricity? – Affordability, adaptability? – Convergence with print and other technologies such as radio? Who will manage the technology for the networking? – AHTIC, DevNet, JSDN and Taiguey collaboration for CIVIC Who will be the hub of the network? – Volunteers or paid workers? – Who will moderate/manage content ? – Who will animate? Can we do it? – grupo_de_trabajo_LGBTTTI_OEA