ICT for Development

Where information and communication technologies are central to social and economic development

ICT for Development| Approaches| Tools| Issues| Regions/Countries| MDGs| Polls / Discussions

Average Rating: no ratings submitted

Caribbean ICT Stakeholders Virtual Community (CIVIC)

Region

Caribbean

Programme Summary

The Caribbean ICT Virtual Community (CIVIC) is a virtual forum of Caribbean information and communication technology (ICT) stakeholders. It is an online venue for sharing information, holding discussions, networking, and linking ideas, actors, and projects related to ICTs and development in the Caribbean. CIVIC also aims to contribute to the building of a common vision/perspective on ICTs, and to promote a Caribbean strategy and/or regional Caribbean-wide actions to foster social change in this area.

Communication Strategies

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.

Development Issues

Technology.

Partners

Support for initial setting up CIVIC was provided by the International Development Research Centre (IDRC) and Institute of Connectivity for the Americas (ICA) in the frame of the Caribbean ICT Roundtable (2002). Between 2003 and 2005, the community was maintained on a voluntary basis. Between 2005 and 2006, a partnership of Caribbean non-governmental organisations (NGOs), including Fundacion Taiguey in the Dominican Republic, DevNet in Guyana, and Jamaica Sustainable Development Network (JSND) in Jamaica, received support from IDRC and ICA to strengthen CIVIC by ensuring further support for the establishment of a clearinghouse on ICT in the Caribbean. Although this "Caribbean Information Society Networking (CarISnet)" project ended in January 2007, a new project, designed to implement CIVIC members' recommendations and its technical working groups outputs, is being developed. This process will include setting up CIVIC's own website.

Contact

CIVIC Moderation
civic-moderator@carisnet.org
Click here to join CIVIC or to access the CIVIC information page on the CarISnet website.

Source

Email from Yacine Khelladi to The Communitation Ininitiative on December 21 2007.


Placed on the Communication Initiative site May 23 2007
Last Updated December 24 2007

How useful did you find this page to your work?

1 - not useful    5 - very useful

Feel free to leave us comments

CAPTCHA
This question is for testing whether you are a human visitor and to prevent automated spam submissions.

Help Seed The CI Network

Login / Regisiter

Subscribe to The Drum Beat, Contribute to Forums, Get Poll Results etc
New to CI? » Start here

Development Classifieds

Poll