Travel Exchanges to Community Networks

I have created this topic as a place for our fantastic community network partners in a project titled “Connecting the Unconnected” (https://www.apc.org/en/node/35376/) where they can share publicly some of their recent visits to each other’s community networks. I hope that aside from an archive, if there are questions or comments made about the visit to learn more information, it can be posted here.

All CN partners need to do is hit the reply button and add what they want to share, whether it be a link to the blog or some resources that have come out of the visit. Cheers! kathleen

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In order to get this topic started, I will re-post one of the first travel exchanges here.
The first travel exchange of 2019 took place in Halekote in Tumkur district of Karnataka, India. It was a visit by Gram Marg project partner, Sarbani Belur, who went to visit the Janastu community mesh radio network. This project is led by the Janastu/Servelots team, including Shalini, Girish and Dinesh. Here is the weblink to the travel exchange:

https://www.apc.org/en/blog/enabling-community-participation-young-girls-and-women-janastu-community-mesh-radio-network

There was also a recent post of a video of some of Janastu’s work called the Namma school radio project… by the way, it is really inspirational!!! : Redirecting...

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Look forward to hearing your comments about the exchange!

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this looks great.
thank you for sharing Kathleen.

testing arabic here
مرحبا!
كيف الحال؟

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Hi @cynthia, the arabic works! What did you say there? :wink:

Abya Yala Community Network Seedbed Visit to Cheran, Mexico

I am posting another travel exchange amongst the CN peers that took place in June 2019. I am using some of the text written by the team who travelled to Cheran and conducted the activities!


Photo Source: Karla Velasco

“The Abya Yala Community Networks Seedbed (Semillero) promoted by AlterMundi, Rhizomatica and REDES A.C., is a training space for promoters, referents and companions of community network processes in the different regions of Latin America. The project aims to build a training space, as well as create pedagogical tools to make them available to people and communities that undertake community processes to appropriate telecommunications technology."

“In its plan for 2019, two training courses, one in Mexico and another in Argentina, were proposed in order to strengthen existing processes and the creation of new community network projects.”

"The first Semillero was planned to be held from June 19 to 24 in Cherán K’eri, Michoacán, Mexico, as a space for articulation between different groups of people working in indigenous and community communication and telecommunications processes in Mexico. The peers from the LAC region were invited to participate in order to contribute to the process.”

The process included 1) hands-on training in a workshop, “Participatory Design of Community Intranets” to graduates of a recent diploma course, 2) workshop on introduction to community networks, 3) the installation of two nodes of the LibreRouter, 4) intranet design using operative system called YunoHost.

Lessons Learned:

“The strategic goal of the intranet in Cherán is an inspiring and authentic take on community networks. The Xamoneta collective, which hosted the event, proposed the creation of the XAMONETA intranet network, which means: ‘echo’ in the most widely spoken indigenous language in the region: purépecha . The aim of the network is to support Cherán’s knowledge compilation as a tool to continue and strengthen the political struggle and the reclaiming of traditional values. Creating a community archive is strategic to achieving the goal of linguistic revitalization and providing ‘connectivity with meaning’".

“In many places, community networks are still looked at as ‘free internet’ or as a possibility to have ‘cheaper internet’, and it is inspiring to know that there are communities thinking beyond that.”

Links to the blogs and twitter posts about this travel exchange!

carla writes for the team, Instituto Bem Estar Brasil in the blog post “Semillero, a dialogue of knowledges” https://ibebrasil.org.br/en/2019/07/semillero-a-dialogue-of-knowledge/


photo source: IBEBrasil blog post screenshot

Gui writes a blog for the Altermundi team (in Spanish) on the experience in a blog called “Semillero de Redes Comunitarias en Cherán” : Semillero de Redes Comunitarias en Cherán |


photo credit: screenshot of Altermundi’s blog

hiure writes for the Coolab team in a blog titled “Coolab joins the “semillero” of community networks in Mexico” Coolab


photo credit: hiure’s blog post

Finally, Redes AC Mexico also posts on twitter some insight to the work (in Spanish) https://twitter.com/redesac_mx/status/1143692362163675136


photo source: screenshot of Redes tweet

Enjoy reading and learning from the different experiences!

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Wherever I go I try to find like-minded people. This weekend I’m headed to #Prague. Anyone around that I should visit?

Hi @how - thanks for the question! I am not familiar with any CNs in the Czech Republic, but there are several in Europe and @taziden posted this FFDN map, with mainly independent ISPs in Europe: https://db.ffdn.org/ . - it might be a place to start looking.
@carlos @mike @nicopace - any other suggestions?

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There are a bunch of people yes, message me on WhatsApp +27737721223

I don’t use what’s app. Can I use this number for normal phone calls or signal?

···

From: Coenraad Loubser via Community Networks [email protected]
Sent: September 8, 2019 6:12:14 AM GMT+02:00
To: [email protected]
Subject: [Community Networks] Travel Exchanges to Community Networks


dagelf

    8 September

how:
Wherever I go I try to find like-minded people. This weekend I’m headed to #Prague. Anyone around that I should visit?

There are a bunch of people yes, message me on WhatsApp +27737721223


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how

    6 September

Wherever I go I try to find like-minded people. This weekend I’m headed to #Prague. Anyone around that I should visit?


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