Caribbean ICT Stakeholders Virtual Community (CIVIC)

CIVIC is an ICT-based initiative designed to create a community with stakeholders from all over the region who are interested in the topic of how to use technology for development. Based on an asynchronic, electronic conferencing platform, CIVIC is Caribbean managed and Caribbean owned. It is open to those in all Caribbean countries. To foster participation, CIVIC accepts postings, messages, discussions, and documents in all the Caribbean languages; the web platform itself may be accessed in English, French, and Spanish. Acknowledging the language barrier for regional networking, all reasonable efforts are made to provide multilingual support as translation of documents, creation of multilingual web pages, and automated translation of email messages. To avoid information overload, only Caribbean ICT-related posts/discussions are accepted.

CIVIC is member-driven. Posting is allowed either by sending an email to a specified address or by logging on through a web interface, with an online archive accessible to all list members; moderators may not alter, modify or delete archived messages.
Members are encouraged to post and modify a short bio highlighting their work, and are also invited to contribute to a resource page which features documents, links, and news posted by participants. Based on members' ideas, thematic working groups (TWGs) are organised to develop specific discussions and action proposals. Among CIVIC members, a specific facilitator is chosen and mandated to ensure balanced participation from all Caribbean cultural/linguistic sub-regions in the main virtual community (CIVIC) and the TWGs and to promote actions that formalise collaboration and vision-sharing among participants from different Caribbean cultural/linguistic sub-regions.

Technology.