The A Spot

We’re fond of saying that advocacy is an everyday practice — it’s about being being able to persuade others that one course of action is superior to another.  This can include everything from where to go for dinner to how best to address global warming.

In Guandong Province, China, it often means the difference between clean or dirty industrial production.  Guangdong, an area about the size of Texas, is home to 100 million people — and more manufacturing jobs than the entire United States.  Often called the “Factory to the World,” this province has maintained double digit economic growth for more than a decade.  As the Government of China now recognizes, however, this growth has engendered a host of new challenges:  skyrocketing energy needs, inefficient production processes, and staggering amounts of pollution and greenhouse gas emissions.  As a consequence, China has proactively set some of the most ambitious energy efficiency and GHG reduction targets of any country in the world.

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Let me just get this out of the way first.  Even after all the warnings…I totally underestimated what it would take to sustain a blog.  But Matthew and I are back at it again with a very cool new resource to share.

Along with Anna Prymakova, in the ISC Ukraine office, we put together a pilot project to shed some light on online government information in Ukraine - www.tvoyaderzhava.org.ua/en/.  Mining the collective brain of the nonprofit tech community we set up a wiki website using a Customized Google Search engine and del.icio.us tag feed.  The result is a simple, user interface that allows Ukrainian citizens to search all .ua.gov websites and using tags browse the different interactive features of over 250 local, regional and national government websites.

We put these resources together after conducting a focus group with users of an IATP center (Internet Access Training Program) initially set up by IREX.  The group highlighted the overwhelming about of online information with little understanding on the part of citizens about what they could do with the information, how to best access it and determine if it was credible.

Anna recently demoed the wiki at an IATP center in Sevastopol.  In her words: she started with sharing with participants the top 5 gov websites of Sevastopol region and of other regions, introduced them to the structure and navigation techniques of uagov at del.icio.us and del.icio.us itself. Then shared with them tvoyaderzhava.org.ua, customized google search, tips for using the site, introduced them wiki-concept, and rss as well, then we analyzed more of online opportunities of forums, Q&A, chats, writing an electronic letter tips, problems government has to overcome while starting answering questions online, why some websites are actively updated and useful and some not useful.  The site was a hit with the users.

The site is in both Ukrainian and English and next steps are for Anna to create a wink presentation that can be shared with the network of IATP centers across Ukraine.

All told the pilot cost around 7500 USD including - domain registration, wiki set up and customization, content creation and posting, time to tag, translation, two site visits.  Thanks to Google for making their search engine available for free to nonprofits.  We used Dokuwiki which is an open source wiki tool perfectly designed to handle multiple languages.  We also contributed back to the code with further translation of parts of it into Ukrainian.  For more on what we did check out - http://www.tvoyaderzhava.org.ua/en/main/about/start 

So tomorrow I leave for an extended trip to Kiev, Ukraine and Prishtina, Kosovo. Both places I have been to before but I still get a little antsy just before a long trip. The kids are prepared, excited about Mommy taking an airplane ride, and have asked me to bring them back a train. Not sure what that is about but I will do my best.

I am excited about the trip as it gives me a great opportunity to see some of our work in action and contribute a bit. In Ukraine we are tackling an interesting issue - how to get government officials and citizens talking to each other more effectively, constructively and authentically. In a small pilot we are working with a new consultant, Bill Edwards, from Gov3 Consulting, a UK based firm to run a workshop with NGO leaders and government officials. It has been a steep learning curve as I learn the ins and outs of working with government ministries.

Now Kosovo on the other hand is an entirely fly by the seat of my pants kind of trip. As usual. We are making changes to IPKO Institute and rethinking what we have to contribute to the development of Kosovo now that it is an independent country. I get to spend some time with Akan Ismaili who is the CEO of IPKOnet and co founder of IPKO. We are cooking up all sorts of great ideas and hopefully I can blog about them soon!

The run up to this trip has me thinking alot about foreign assistance and US foreign assistance in particular. I know, I know, I am not much fun at a dinner party. But there is a great video circulating from the Center for Global Development which popularizes an idea that is long overdue - the US needs a new foreign assistance act. Take a gander at their video on You Tube.

More from the road.

If it’s Teresa’s tendency to geek out over cool new tools, it’s probably mine to get lost down the rabbit hole of overthinking theories and abstract ideas. Today’s post is a prime example, but a blog is a blog, and since this is what I’ve been thinking about with respect to advocacy this past week, I’m putting those thoughts down as best I can.

Karl Maria von Clausewitz famously opined that war is “merely the continuation of politics by other means.” Put a different way, we might say that war — or violence — is advocacy taken to its illogical extreme. Our definition of advocacy up in the sidebar over there is “developing a passion for something and doing everything you can to make it happen.” It’s that “everything” that I’m picking at today. The Hutus of Rwanda were passionate that Tutsis should no longer exist, and they were truly willing to do everything to see that happen. Osama bin Laden and the followers of al Qaeda were passionate about striking a blow against the liberal, secular democracy that the United States represents; they were willing to everything, or anything, to do that. President Bush was passionate about removing Saddam Hussein from power for his (purported) role in supporting al Qaeda, and perhaps also passionate about bringing stable democracy to the Middle East. Whatever your opinion of the war in Iraq, few would question the President’s willingness to use any means available to accomplish his goals.

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I admit it, I am a geek, if you could not already tell from the last few posts to the blog. Matthew often has to reign me in when I geek out too much. But today a new resource came across my desk that not only spoke to the geek in me but also to the committed supporter of advocates around the world. Hat tip to Serhiy Danylenko in Kiev for pointing me to this.

The team at Tactical Tech has put together a new online resource called the DIY Communications Toolkit . This is a great new addition to the Security, Publishing, Audio/Visual Toolboxes.

(from the website) The DIY Communications toolkit from Tactical Tech offers a collection of tried and tested, accessible free and open source tools. The toolkit is designed for small and medium-sized NGOs, advocates, and citizen journalists to help them create and distribute content for their advocacy efforts while exploring the constantly evolving world of campaigning and communications.It contains a series of how-to’s, hands-on-guides and tutorials that walk you through the processes of creating and distributing content for awareness raising and online activism.

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