Digital Edge

Last week we had an interview on popular SA Technology debate podcast show Digital Edge. The show is definitely worth listening into and is managed by Saul Kropman and Jarred Cinman.

Why not listen to the podcast here and join the debate.

Finalist for SA Blog Awards 2009

Thanks to all who nominated The Reconstructed for the SA Blog Awards. This is a great testimony having young men and women who's lives were destroyed by substance abuse and gangsterism, and through blogging have began a journey of reconstruction (Some of our bloggers in picture above).

So to help us make this journey even more memorable please vote for us http://www.sablogawards.com/2009/ for the "Best Group Blog".

Knowledge 2.0: Moontoast

I've just come accross an interesting Web 2.0 tool, Moontoast that allows you the opportunity to share your knowledge with those who are looking to learn more about an area that you have expertise in. This gives those real and "self-proclaimed" gurus the opportunity to empower others with knowledge possibly breaking the knowledge divide.

My question though is how can we use this tool to empower citizens in a Community in Tension (CiT)? I have some ideas that I know could be useful so watch this space to see how we will be exploring this technology in the reconstruction of citizens.

Creative Communities for Sustainable Living

We were encouraged to hear that an initiative sponsored by the United Nations have chosen The Reconstructed programme as one of their African cases for Creative Communities for Sustainable Living project. This is a good indication that the work we are doing are being recognised globally.

More about the project below:

CREATIVE COMMUNITIES FOR SUSTAINABLE LIFESTYLES
Research activity supported by the Swedish Tasks Force within the UNEP - UN DESA ten-year framework of programmes on Sustainable Consumption and Production.

"Creative Communities for Sustainable Lifestyles" (CCSL) starts from the achievements of the EMUDE(Emerging User Demand on Sustainable Solutions) European research project to enlarge and adapt the notions of creative communities and promising initiatives for new models of sustainable lifestyles at a world-wide scale. Goals are:
-to explore and adapt the creative community concept to non-European contexts with a special focus on the emerging urban societies of the South and the far East.
-to organise a series of workshops with local NGO in emerging countries in South and East parts of the world to present EMUDE vision and results on creative communities and promising initiatives;
-to involve local NGO to revisit local initiatives and experiences through the EMUDE approach and set with them perspective to promote and implement new sustainable lifestyles;
-to initiate a network that links the current European EMUDE network with other "antennas" in other regions (in particular local NGO and international organisations);
-to collect new examples of promising initiatives from the local NGO experiences.

You can visit the CCSL and Reconstructed websites for more information.

Web 2.0 Tools For Project Management

The following presentation by Douglas Tokuno is useful to get project managers thinking using the free Web 2.0 tools available to them on the web.

Web 2.0 Tools For Project Management

View more presentations from Douglas Tokuno.

Guidelines to Engaging with your community

Pictured Above: ATHLONE LIVING LAB AREA

Well after many requests of how we've managed to get community involvement in our project I decided to list some guidelines that we followed building a relationship with the Bridgetown Community in the Athlone Living Lab (ALL). These are some of the steps we followed to ensure beneficial community engagement:

IDENTIFICATION PHASE:
- Identify Context and Purpose for engagement
- Identify Community Space for engagement
- Identify strong community stakeholders who are well respected and active in the community
NB: Engagement activities should not be burden to community

PLANNING PHASE:
- Planning with Key Stakeholders
* Plan engagement activities with Community Members you already know
* Plan engagement activities with Community Members you don’t know
- Prioritize engagement activities
- Identify roles of stakeholders in Community Engagement
- Create your engagement Implementation Plan

IMPLEMENTATION PHASE:
- Involve key community stakeholders from the offset
- Build Relationships
* DO NOT make promises
- Establish Community Champions
- Communication mechanisms to enhance engagement
- Align with Community (Stakeholders') Vision and Mission

ENGAGEMENT PHASE:
- Divide engagement activities in subsections
- Engagement with community becomes part of community activities
- Monitor Progress of engagement
- Maintain relationships with community and its members
- Transfer of responsibilities to Community champions

SUSTAINING PHASE:
- Establish Community Co-champions who are identified and mentored by Champions
- Continuous monitoring of progress
- Strengthen relationships with community and its members
- Engagement activities objectives/goals measured and assessed
- Future engagement objectives identified

Using the above steps (iterative steps) proved to be helpful in establishing the community engagement and the Athlone Living Lab (ALL). We trust that this could also be useful to you when establishing relationships in communities in tension for ICT development.