This site is still being constructed. Many links are not currently accessible unless you are registered with Ned.com at http://www.ned.comThis is because many pages here had been created and stored at Ned and only copied here when the WWC website was created. Until this problem is overcome, you may wish to register at Ned (it takes only a few seconds and costs nothing). This will also give you access there to many discussion threads about the World Connection project and over 400 pages of information about all the countries included in the Worldwide Connectory and many nof the non-profit organisations working there (see http://www.ned.com/group/wwc/ws/nonprofitslist/)
An image to inspire us with hope!Delivering An Online Future to all parts of our Global Village This picture shows the arrival of a consignment of computers in Leribe district in Lesotho. They were sent by SOLID, a grasssroots community organisation in Salt Spring Island in British Columbia, with a total population of around 10,000. The computers were for the Philesanong Disabled Project in HaMakhata, one of a set of linked initiatives that make up the Gardens of Hope project, which was set up in partnership with SOLID in an area of southern Africa very badly affected by the HIV/AIDS pandemic. While this partnership between communities in Canada and Lesotho has nothing directly to do with the Worldwide Connection Project, it illustrates the powerful impact that international partnerships can have at a grassroots level and will hopefully serve as an inspiration for others to follow. Welcome to the Worldwide Connection Project!
(based on the listings in the Worldwide Connectory)
Our mission is to Make Poverty History, but bottom-up:
create grassroots outreach on a global scale
use the internet to link up rich and poor communities across the world via a Worldwide Connectory
provide almost half the world's population with new virtual neighbours every five years
By sharing out the world, we can bring it much closer together.
We invite you to take part in a unique experiment in International Dialogue and Collaboration.
This project covers two fifths of the world's population: the countries that make up the richest fifth and poorest fifth.
Since most of the world's computers are accessed by the world's richest fifth, almost everyone who reads this webpage will find that they are included and eligible to take part in the WCP (World Connectory Project).
To check that YOU can take part, use the Navigation sidebar (above left) or click here on:
or
If your country is listed on either List A (the global south) or List B (the global north), it means that your own local area has been included in the Worldwide Connectory (WWC) and has already been allocated a partner area.
If you are from the global north, your partner area will be from the global south. If you live in the global south, your partner area will be from the global north. Each WWC Area has a population of around half million people: so in each partnership, there will be approximately one million people. This means that in every area there will be many separate local communities. The WCP will be just as much about connecting these separate local communities in pursuit of a common purpose, as it will be about making the international connections. Global north or global south, we are all in this together.
We hope that from this framework of 2,400 random worldwide partnerships, real community friendships will develop, involving the sharing of experience, exchange of ideas and collaborative use of each partnership's collective resources for the mutual benefit of all.
Wherever you live, the essential point of the WCP is that you are invited to make contact with those who live in your allocated partner area. For the next five years, we hope that you and all the people in your allocated partnerships will
So what might you do?
We invite all Areas to nominate an acting Contact Person, so people from their partner area (and elsewhere) will know who to contact to find out more about what's going on in your area. If your area does not yet have a Contact Person, feel free to nominate yourself. Just click on Contact.
Getting started
By listing all the Worldwide Connectory areas and by inviting CatComm (an independent third party) to oversee the process by which each area is allocated a partner area every five years (the first partnerships will last until the end of 2014), we have provided a framework for Worldwide Connection: how you build up a network of Connection Groups within your own local area and how you decide to make contact with people in your partner area is entirely up to you!
But a good way might be to recruit your friends, neighbours or work colleagues to form a local Connection Group and then work on this project together.
At this website, we will offer you some suggestions of how you might take part. We hope that you too will use this website to share some of your own WCP experiences. Your successes may inspire others to emulate you; your disappointments may alert others to avoid making the same mistakes.
But however you choose to take part - by active participation or just by following along for the time being -
WELCOME TO THE WORLDWIDE CONNECTION PROJECT
THANK YOU FOR YOUR SUPPORT! There's more information about the Worldwide Connection Project on our FAQs page.
Find out about your own local WCP Area by clicking on:
List A areas (for Developing Countries) and List B areas (for Developed Countries) |