Narrowing The Digital Divide Notes On A Global Netcorps by Ian Smillie - October 1999

ICT Volunteering So Far
The rapid onset of new information and communications technologies (ICT) offers an unexpected opportunity for a rejuvenation of the original volunteer concept. Needs in the South are great and technical assistance, when available, is enormously expensive. In the North, the new technologies are best understood by, and are more familiar to a generation of young adults than to their parents. Opportunities to learn about them - both formal and informal - are more readily available to youth than to people in mid career. In short, there is a dramatic need for assistance on the one hand, and on the other, as with the first generation of volunteers in the 1960s, there is a large pool of young people with the potential to address it.

So far, ICT volunteering represents a tiny proportion of the volunteer-sending scene in Canada and elsewhere. The following pages describe the Canadian effort to date, and touch on some of the efforts that are beginning to emerge elsewhere.

NetCorps Canada International
In 1997, Industry Canada, in conjunction with the University College of Cape Breton and the International Development Research Centre (IDRC), contributed to a NetCorps-style project that sent two residents of Cape Breton to Angola to work on Internet and Geographic Information Systems projects. In 1998, Industry Canada, CIDA and several of Canada's volunteer-sending agencies collaborated on the posting of 14 NetCorps interns to Africa, Asia and Latin America. Later the same year, an additional 30 internships were made available for the Americas. IDRC has been involved in the project from its early stages, and organized postings for some of the first interns in its Acacia and SchoolNet projects in South Africa.

NetCorps Canada International was formally established with the creation of a coalition of volunteer-sending NGOs, and the securing of funds by Industry Canada from the Youth Employment Strategy (YES) of Human Resources Development Canada (HRDC). Five hundred internships will be made available between 1999 and 2001.

Six of Canada's volunteer-sending agencies have joined together in the coalition that is implementing the program. Strategic direction of the coalition is provided by a steering committee of its members. The coalition is represented on Industry Canada's advisory committee for NetCorps which includes other federal departments as well as the Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada and the Association of Canadian Community Colleges.

The management of the coalition and its activities is undertaken by a secretariat located within the lead agency, Canada World Youth (CWY). The secretariat coordinates the implementation of common services and manages all financial and administrative aspects of the program, including sub-contracting internships to other coalition members. In addition to CWY, the coalition includes Alternatives, CUSO, Oxfam-Québec, Voluntary Service Overseas Canada (VSO) and World University Service of Canada (WUSC). WUSC is the Canadian recruiting representative of the United Nations Volunteer program (UNV) in Canada and it allocated ten NetCorps positions to UNV in 1999. (Other Canadian NGOs have also worked with UNV in different capacities.)

NetCorps Canada International:

responds to young people's needs for work experience and career development;

supports developing countries' efforts to enhance their information and communication technologies capacity;

supports developmental objectives of partners to improve their information and communication technologies abroad in fields such as health, education and agriculture;

profiles Canadian leadership in the use of information technology for social and economic development;

helps promote a connected Canada to the world.'

These aims and objectives as stated by Industry Canada are complemented and supplemented by the aims and objectives of different coalition members. VSO Canada, for example, 'sends people as volunteers, committed to work in ways which are sensitive to the cultural values of others. Within relationships based on shared circumstances and mutual respect, volunteers help to promote self reliance, self-respect and self-sufficiency.'

Canada World Youth sets the objectives for its involvement in NetCorps as follows:

to develop employability skills among youth (communication, leadership and teamwork, problem-solving etc.), leading to improved employment prospects;

to develop active global citizenship (understanding and respect for other cultures, volunteerism, commitment to peace and social justice etc.);

to strengthen the information technology infrastructure of organizations which host internships;

to showcase Canadian information technology expertise and products...

Each coalition member recruits and places NetCorps interns using its own systems and field staff, although there is a common briefing program before people leave Canada. In-country orientation, field support and debriefing are the responsibility of individual coalition members.

Assignments are six months in duration and are open to Canadians between the ages of 19 and 30. This was agreed as part of the HRDC funding package which provides C$15,000 for each intern. Of this, $12,000 must be spent on direct costs related to travel, accommodation, subsidies and other support.

Examples of what interns have worked on include:

an intern in Chile worked with a network of organizations on website development, computer training and Internet applications;

an intern in Vietnam helped to set up an intranet system for a Vietnamese agricultural organization in order to improve communications between the head office in Hanoi and three regional offices. If the pilot is successful, the network will be expanded to 61 provincial offices;

two interns in Angola worked with an NGO in setting up a Linux box, establishing a local area network within the office, configuring new equipment and upgrading old, and training people to take their place when they left. Examples of some requests outstanding at the time of writing:

an Indonesian NGO working on urban education has requested an intern to design a website for the project, help in creating a company profile for the organization, and assistance in teaching staff in various computer programs, including website development, animation and multi-media applications;

a similar position was available with the Woman Inc. Crisis Centre in Jamaica;

the Fundación Acceso in Costa Rica has requested an intern to help assess the impact of the Internet on the organizational capacities of various civil society organizations in the region, with a view to further promotion or adaptation of the technology;

the Arias Foundation in Costa Rica has requested an intern to help design a data base on legislation around citizen participation in Central America;

a coalition of 29 local radio stations in Peru has requested an intern to train affiliates in use of the Internet and e-mail, and to establish common data bases on listener interests and radio products;

the Federation of Togolese NGOs has requested an intern to help establish a web page, and to conduct training that will facilitate e-mail connectivity between its member organizations.

Other NetCorps-style Operations

NetCorps Americas
NetCorps Americas is an initiative of the Trust for the Americas, a foundation established in 1997 and housed within the Organization of American States. NetCorps Americas assigns individuals with computer and ICT skills to projects and organizations working with low income people throughout the Americas. Assignments can range from three weeks to a year, with most averaging about six weeks so far. Individuals may be recruited from anywhere, including from countries outside the Americas. There is no age restriction, and while a special program is being developed for students, mid career and retired individuals are also welcome. There is expected to be a strong South-South component, with assignments arranged within the region between participating agencies in OAS member countries. NetCorps Americas acts as a broker between sending and receiving agencies, and has formed a 30-member coalition of participating bodies, which includes governments as well as sending and receiving agencies. The initiative is funded purely from private sector contributions. About 12 NetCorps Americas volunteers had been placed at the time of writing. The scope for collaboration between this initiative and a broader international effort is high. NetCorps Americas was originally called WebCorps, but the name was changed in order to facilitate greater collaboration with the Canadian initiative. An Industry Canada representative currently sits on the NetCorps Americas Board, and the organization has already linked requesting agencies in several Caribbean countries with two NetCorps Canada International coalition members, CUSO and VSO, who will be providing between eight and twelve Canadian interns in the near future.

Other
Industry Canada has been involved in the creation of other NetCorps-style networks that suggest how broad the applications of the approach can be. The National Graduate Register (NGR) is an on-line data base containing profiles of post-secondary students and recent graduates across Canada, aiming to match them with the requirements of interested employers. Volunteer Canada, a national charitable umbrella organization of Canadian volunteer centres links 500 nonprofit organizations, agencies, government departments and corporations and over 10,000 community organizations. NetCorps is a nonprofit Oregon-based organization which recruits and trains students who possess new communication skills, placing them on two-term assignments in American nonprofit organizations working for social change. Its aims are:

to increase the capacity of progressive grassroots groups to organize, advocate and address social and environmental change through appropriate communication and information technology, training and assistance, and

to train university students to become the next wave of technically savvy nonprofit leaders. In addition to internships for students in organizations like the Alaska Rainforest League and the Northwest Coalition for Alternatives to Pesticides, NetCorps offers a consulting service and a project development service. There is a wide variety of organizations offering ICT assistance for nonprofit organizations. The Association for Progressive Communications (APC), founded in 1987, 'is the world's most extensive network of Internet providers dedicated to serving non-governmental organizations and citizen activists.' APC offers a range of services and support: Internet access, training and support for users, trainers and facilitators, news and information services, communications consulting, online collaboration strategies, website development and customized information tools, including databases and search engines. The Washington-based HandsNet works domestically to 'empower organizations to effectively integrate online communications strategies and policies for children, families and people in need..' It offers a clipping service, management seminars and strategic planning workshops, much of it on-line. OneWorld Volunteers offers a UK-based website where organizations from any country can post requests. Applicants must deal directly with the organization posting the request. Positions include unpaid part-time work in organizations such as Amnesty International in London, but organizations that place long-term volunteers overseas, such as VSO and CECI, also post notices on the site. At the time of writing, a British NGO, Interaid, was looking for volunteers who could work domestically and overseas as part of its 'Net Corps' in Botswana and South Africa. While the 'NetCorps' name is now used almost generically in nonprofit circles, it is also the name of a California-based global web hosting company that offers 'the best service on the planet'.

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