ZA-WWW2008 Conference

This year the 10th ZA World Wide Web conference was held in Cape Town, South Africa, 3-5 September 2008. One of the large tracks this year was the e-Society track at the conference which we managed to publish 4 papers and 4 posters in the proceedings. Three of the papers and 3 of the posters were looking at the use of technology for community empowerment.

A copy of the proceedings will be available soon but you can find the programme here. More exciting news is that one of our Posters,("Blogging: An alternative approach to empower citizens in communities with tension", J Pereira & M Parker) won the "Best Poster" award at this year's conference. This is an opportunity for us to get more involved in the reconstruction of our communities.

Meeting with MXit

This afternoon I met with Gavin Marshall from MXit. It was a good meeting as we were looking at possibilities of how MXit could support the Reconstruction project. We also got the endorsement/ blessing from MXit that they will support what we are doing and assist wherever possible. We will keep you updated on how we take this relationship further to empower communities using this technology.

Reached 200 subscribers

We've reached over 200 subscriber to the service and also realised that more counsellors would be required as we've had more than 50 conversations in our last session this week. Just completed an interview with Heart Radio 104.9 in Cape Town. Some of the guys in the Impact Team are preparing for the World Wide Web conference this week. Also check out their reconstructed blog which is growing with rich content.

Also catch us in the Weekend Argus giving more information about the reconstruction project.

Meeting with Child Line

This morning Ramon Thomas and I met with the national coordinator of Child Line who is interested in the counselling project using MXit. The meeting was fruitful as we discussed at the endless possibilities and advantages of having such a technology for the Child Line counselling centres. We will resume our conversations around implementation after the Digital Citizen Indaba conference and take this opportunity further.

Expanding MXit counselling service to Eastern Cape

After a short visit to the Eastern Cape and sharing some of the work we are doing in Cape Town on the Cape Flats, we had and amazing response from young people who needed this service as they are facing the problem of alcohol abuse in their homes and communities. We have acquired 15 subscribers from the Eastern Cape in a space of a few days. Also have a meeting with Zara Nicholson from the Weekend Argus this Wednesday about the MXit project.

Tonight I will be joining Ramon Thomas from NETucation for a talk at St. Cyprians Girls' School. He is also a speaker at the 27Dinner tomorrow night. Definitely not to be missed.

Help is at addicts' fingertips

A week later after meeting with the editor, Chantel Erfort, of the Independent Community Newspapers, we got her support for our project. We also got front page coverage about the project in the Athlone News. This will bring the MXit counselling service to the public attention after testing for such a long time.

We are also in the process of training more reconstructed individuals who have conquered their addictions.

You can read the article here:

http://www.cput.ac.za/news/clippings/articles/august_2008/AthloneNewsPg1_20Aug2008.pdf

http://www.cput.ac.za/news/clippings/articles/august_2008/AthloneNewsPg3_20Aug2008.pdf