This website is a global survey of new projects and ideas in using new media technology to help people in developing countries face the challenges in their lives. According to the international student authors, who come from over a dozen different countries, this site includes differing international perspectives and intends to serve as a reminder that different cultures approach new media with different values, goals, and reservations. The site has some two dozen projects and ideas organised as:

• New forms of interactive online media and their uses in China, India, Syria, Iran, and Myanmar. For example: The role of the internet in Myanmar's recent protest and military response involved rapidly disseminated information via Web 2.0 tools to publish and inform the world about the situation in the country. "Existing blog sites, which had already been campaigning for democracy in Myanmar, played their part, along with new sites that arose in response to the government brutality. These served not only to convey information but also to aggregate and contribute news."

• The cell phone is being used to redefine local markets, community health, and education, and alert communities to disaster. Projects focus on Rwanda, Sri Lanka, Nigeria, Myanmar, Pakistan, Kenya, China, and Bangladesh. For example: "Rwanda: TRACnet Mobile Health Information System - The TRACnet system, developed by the company Voxiva, is a web-based application that is accessible both through computers and mobile phones. The system allow clinics to send HIV/AIDS patient information from mobile phones with [short messaging service] SMS text messaging to a central database using a standard Motorola phone with a downloadable application. Using TRACnet, health care workers can track and follow up with HIV patients in remote areas with no electricity and little infrastructure. Clinics can also receive the results of laboratory tests and drug recall alerts on their mobile phones. They can also send health alerts and inventory counts of antiretroviral drugs, as well as download treatment guidelines and training materials. The system is designed to increase accountability among health care workers through an electronic record that is created by every input into the system. TRACnet also facilitates better communication from clinic to clinic as well as from individual clinics to the Health Ministry in Kigali." Editor's note: Footnotes and numbers have been removed from this quotation.

• Community radio and public service television offer approaches for reaching isolated and marginalised communities with development initiatives. Projects implemented in India, Afghanistan, the Balkans, and South Africa are discussed. For example: "In 2003, Internews Network, an American [non-governmental organisation] NGO..., designed a US$4 million project to build a network of 32 independent radio stations throughout Afghanistan. The project also aimed to train journalists at the stations and to build a Kabul-based bundle of programs to aid development and reconciliation throughout the country. Internews worked with local partners at each of the 32 stations, thus drawing expertise on regional affairs from local communities. The project brought the production of media to the local level, outside major cities, for the first time in Afghanistan’s history. It gave rural Afghans a voice in a country with severe power shortages and illiteracy. Studies at the time noted that radio was the medium with the most potential to reach Afghan women."

• The infrastructure for communications helps to define both the content and the limitations. This study analyses the different public and private stakeholders in African information and communication technology (ICT). It is a look at continent-wide trends, including the specific telecommunications governance and public and private contractors of Ghana and Nigeria. It offers an analysis and discussion of the proposed fibre optic cable, the East African Submarine Cable System (EASSy), China's investment in Africa, and institutional efforts at multilateral collaboration to provide international aid, among other topics.

Email from Anne Nelson to The Communication Initiative on March 7 2008.