The Few, The Proud, The Geeks

You may have read about Geekcorps before on Slashdot. They're a bunch of good people doing a bunch of cool things, and it was high time we wrote something about them so that everyone can know what's going on. Click 'Read More' below to read about Geekcorps, and how you can help them push back the digital divide in developing countries.

Ethan Zuckerman, one of the founders of Tripod, felt that he wasn't getting as much as he wanted out of what he was doing. He knew from personal experience that a lot of people had achieved personal gain through the Internet, and wanted to donate money or time to a good cause, but couldn't find one that fit. So, along with now-program director Elisa Korentayer, Ethan decided to form Geekcorps, as a way to take burnt-out techies to developing countries, bringing their expertise to places that desperately needed it. Ethan assembled a team of technical gurus -- and international development specialists -- and started gathering funds to make his dream come true. His strategizing and monetary legwork is about to bear fruit: Geekcorps pilot program is beginning this year in Ghana. The Ghana program demonstrates the Geekcorps approach in a nutshell: the group will dispatch techies from the United States and Europe to developing countries to work with local small and medium for-profit enterprises. They're targeting countries with enough infrastructure to use the Internet for commerce, but where that opportunity goes largely unused.

The six techies to serve in Ghana will work with six businesses that work with information technology, whether they turn out to be cyber cafes or small manufacturers that want to get online. In return for providing these services, Geekcorps will ask each business to commit to social responsibility and community engagement. Geekcorps would ask, for instance, that a cafe offer access services for low and/or free rates to members of the local community. The specialists chosen for the program, likewise, are expected not only to help out these start-ups, but also to provide information technology training for the local community.

Zuckerman recognizes that Geekcorps isn't the only organization to do this kind of work; also in the works is a global database of techies who would be interested in volunteering for their program, so techie volunteers can be farmed out at no cost to other governmental and community-building projects. While there is only so much that Geekcorps can do, they understand that by keeping information free and taking the time to do it right, the benefits will be much greater.

Linux and other Free Software products have been extremely popular in developing countries, for their adaptability and low hardware requirements as much as for the absence of per-seat licenses. Is Geekcorps dedicated to using Free Software solutions? I asked Elisa Korentayer, one of the Geekcorps founders and international specialists.

Elisa: We're pretty dedicated. We're a big fan of Open Source, and we're a big fan of taking advantage of free software. The aspects of the Internet that are incredibly conducive to non-profit, saving-the-world kind of attitudes, we're really into that. Think about it -- What we're doing in human terms is very similar to what Open Sourcing is. We're going into a country and we're saying 'We're going to offer you services, but we're going to ask you to give those services to other people.' We're going to say 'You can have access to this, but you need to provide that access to other people who didn't have access before."

Elisa provides a startling example of the scale of the technology divide developing countries face:

Elisa: One of the sad-but-true facts right now is that the United States government has set a goal to have a computer in every school, in every library, and they're about 90% of the way there. The goal that the United States has for developing countries is for everyone to live within one day's travel of a telephone.

Geekcorps is looking for volunteers to build these solutions in developing countries. However, if you can't get three to four months off of work to volunteer in Ghana, there is still a good opportunity to work with Geekcorps in your off-time back in your local neighborhood.

Elisa: A lot of the other stuff we're thinking about in terms of taking advantage of the Internet is that we hope to have an open channel for our volunteers in Ghana to communicate back to volunteers at home, so other techies can log in from wherever they are to help those in the developing countries."

Companies worldwide claim to make the Internet and computers more accessible, but Geekcorps is getting out there and doing it this summer. Geekcorps needs time, effort and rampant volunteerism, and the opportunity for Open Source and Free Software enthusiasts to get involved is there for the taking.

Comments

That's pretty cool...

[seebs]

I'm not sure whether this is brilliant or stupid.

Pros: Technology clearly helps people become more self-sufficient. It's not necessarily a good thing to wait until everything else is in place to give people tools.

Cons: Perhaps the money and resources would be better spent helping people stabilize their economies, get fed, and things like that?

I guess I come down on the "pro" side. We've been trying to "feed the poor" for as long as we've had written history, and it's never really *solved* anything. Now, if we *EDUCATE* the poor, maybe that'll actually change something.

Re:That's pretty cool...

[geekcorps]

Just to weigh in - let me reassure you all that we didn't choose Ghana via the dart method. I lived in Ghana in 1993-1994 and have travelled there subsequently. On a trip in January, my wife and I were amazed at how many people asked us questions about using the Internet. After spending most of an afternoon giving a spontaneous class on web-based email at a cybercafe in Accra, we concluded that Ghana would be an excellent place to try a Geekcorps pilot project.

Ghana's an interesting example of a country in transition - most of the population lives in rural areas and work as subsistence farmers, but there's a large migration to urban areas and a need for high-paying jobs to support these migrants. No, most folks aren't going to come from a village and land a job doing web design... but they might find jobs working for a factory that's expanding... because it's suddenly selling products to a wider world market... because someone's helped them set up an ecommerce presence and fulfillment system. This is realistic in Ghana because the government has substantially liberalized telecommunications law, allowing ISPs to operate and ordinary individuals to get relatively inexpensive phone lines. (Not the case in much of the world.)

One of the populations we're most concerned with helping in countries like Ghana is the thousands of university graduates who have computer and business skills and bring them to the US, because there aren't a lot of good IT jobs in Ghana at the moment. Our goal is to help folks build great IT businesses in Ghana to give folks an incentive to share their talents in their home countries, rather than contributing to the problem of "brain drain" many developing nations face.

other needs

[crovax]

Don't people think that preventing starvation in 3rd world countries would be more important than bringing the internet the 2nd world countries?!?

I for one will not support the Geekcorps.

Don't get me wrong, I think It is a good idea and there hearts are in the right place, but there are other things that are more important.
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If my facts are wrong then tell me. I don't mind.

Re:other needs

[seebs]

We've been trying to prevent starvation for about five thousand years. It turns out that people who don't have a good education tend to fuck a lot. They tend to have too many kids. Until you get them out of the cycle of having more kids than they (or you) can support, you make no progress.

Think of it as a particularly relevant form of education. Communication, planning, resources... These are all things people will need if we want them to someday feed *themselves*.

The more I think about it, the more cool this sounds; it's a good use of resources. Free skilled labor is always good.

100% a good thing

[Nafai7]

How can a person like me really help the underdeveloped nations of the world? I don't think I have what it takes to go out to the starving masses and hand out food. However, I CAN take an old Pentium or even 486 and set up an e-commerce server, enabling individuals and companies in other countries to grab a little piece of the new global marketplace.

Remember the old adage (paraphrased as best I can remember), "Give a man a fish and he'll eat for a day, teach a man to fish and he'll eat for a lifetime." I'm all for geekcorps... I'll be checking into their web site further to see how I can help.

How to start a Civil War

[Roger_Wilco]

First of all, I think the idea of educating people is a good thing. Don't get me wrong!

But, according to Johan Galtung's Rank Disequilibrium theory of war, educating the poor, if done by itself, can encourage violent revolutions.

The theory goes like this: when people are wealthy, educated, respected, and their skills are being well used, they are not likely to revolt. Likewise, if they are poor, uneducated, abused, and ignored they are likely to be resigned to their lot, and be not likely to revolt. However, people who are a mix, eg poor but educated and unable to get a worthwhile job, are unhappy and are therefore more likely to revolt.

This theory suggests that to cause a civil war, one should:

1. Create universities, producing an intellectual class
2. Make few positions available where the education can be used effectively
3. Institute mass education
4. Make no other changes, so the populace is educated but given no opportunity to better themselves with any correstponding rise in economic status or power.

Galtung does not suggest by this that 3rd world countries should be kept in their "underdog" position, but that development should be done on several fronts simultaneously.

Do this in your own community!

[Izaak]

If you can not get away from your job for several months, don't be afraid to do the same thing in your own community. Most metro areas have their share of poverty and poor education.

I build up net surfing stations using linux running on old hardware and then donate them to people who can't afford a new computer. I also occasionally teach free computer classes for people who need to improve their job skills but can't afford commercial training.

Thad

Two major points missed

[penfold2]

I think there are two points here which everyone seems to have missed.

First there is the question of what use the Internet would to people in second world countries. A few people have commented that it would be enable people to learn and gain knowledge, but there is more to it than that.

With the Internet as we currently see it, one of the major uses which we in the developed world have is purchasing things on-line. These purchases are invariably cheaper than they are to buy in a shop, so we save money. In Britain the government has already commented that they want to get more of the deprived areas onto the Internet. They recognise that those people who most need to save money, are loosing out on the chance to do so. Those who can afford an Internet connection can save a lot, thus increasing the economic divide within the country. This divide is obviously even bigger between the developed and developing countries for in part the same reasons.

Secondly. Those people who have questioned the merits of a scheme like this, on the grounds that there are more important things which developing countries need seem to have missed the point. Yes, they do need food, water and shelter. Of course we shouldn't stop giving that and start giving them PC's. But there is a limit to the amount of food and cloths which can be donated at any time, and once this limit has been reached, we should not sit back and say we are doing all that we can, we should strive forward to find more ways in which we can help, which IMHO is exactly what this scheme is setting out to achieve.

To me it makes no sense at all to get a highly skilled computing professional, lugging sacks, building walls etc, when he/she has rare skills which can be put to use instead.

Remember the home front too!

[pkj]

Bringing computers into third world countries may sound exciting and exotic (I revived a few dead computers for a K-12 school of 30 kids while sailing in the Bahamas) but it may surprise you to know that a computer is just as alien in America's inner cities as it is in much of the third world. This is not to mention the fact that in much of the third world electricity and telephones are still considered luxuty items, so getting a machine on the web can be a serious challenge!

The point is, you can make a huge difference just be working a few weekends, essentially in your own back yard. To see an example of what can be done, check out a site that we have been working on in Baltimore:

http://agape.qis.net/

This site is hosted over the same 56KB modem line that the kids used to surf the web, so be prepared for a wait, ok?

-p.