At this time, the gap among those that have access on internet, to electronic mail, those who can connect to the net and those who cannot.

In this period in which our lives are changing, there are many areas in the world that are unable to compete with more advanced countries, rather it causes a great disparity with meaningful economic, cultural and social consequences.

The term Digital Divide came into regular usage in the mid ’90s when the President of United States of America, Bill Clinton and his Vice President Al Gore used such term in a 1996 speech in Knoxville, Tennessee for indicating the unhomogeneous fruition of telecommunication services among American population. (Wikipedia source).

However, today is more common to define with this term the existing gap in accessing to new technologies in a global perspective.

The access and the use of these technologies represent in our world a prerequisite for economic and social development and for the modernization of the production’s systems. For the countries that are not able to adapt to the new technological system, the  gaps ecome every time bigger.

To identify the specific measures to accomplish for acting on the digital divide, first of all it is necessary to quantify the wideness, to follow its evolution, evaluating the situation and the needs of the different countries for addressing the investments and verifying the efficiency.

The access to technologies, in particular to facilities for connection, is due to various factors:

The geographic area (above all in developing countries). The population of slums and rural districts of urban areas dispose of lesser occasions to access to the information and telecommunications technologies.

Sex, social class and educational level. In fact, men enjoy a bigger mobility and go to work to urban areas, while women are often subjected to religious and sociocultural  prohibitions which stop them to use public transports or to frequent public places, for instance the Internet Point, in determinate time bands.

The absence of facilities and services. It limits the diffusion of information technologies that presuppose large economic investments.

The Income. The access to Internet is controlled by the traditional “power’s  axis” being limited in terms of social classes, education, race and sex. Unfortunately in Africa to utilize Internet is necessary a certain level of income and level of education, so only a few part of the population (and lesser women) reach such levels. For these reasons it is necessary to invest in data processing courses.

Information and Communication Technologies can increase the gap among rich and poor countries, but if used in full cognition of the facts can attenuate it.

Many international and local organizations take note of the problem and discuss about the digital divide between the north and the south of the world, starting experimental projects directed to test the efficacy and the impact that the use of such medium can cause in culture very different from the western one.

So, we tempt an approach to e-learning, to telemedicine, to e-commerce for developing the economy of villages and improve the life’s conditions of the population.

However, it is necessary a physical facility made of telephone and electric systems, modem and computer in order that everyody can really have access to information, as well as, the competences for utilizing and diffusing such culture.

New generation’s technologies are not really necessary and it is demonstrated by the ingenious projects put in the most isolated rural areas of the globe.

The only limit to the sharing of data communication with the developing countries is based in the willingness to do something by those ones.

Anyway, the facilities’ problems in the South of the world are undeniable , both for disposing of the rights of use and for the non-territorial transit of the access terminals.

Experts believe that the problem is in the non-privatization and in non-liberalization of telephone systems, however the governments often  report that the national companies would loose a part of their income if they would reduce the fees. Usually the reduction of fees encourages people to use more the telephone, allowing to improve the whole system.

Furthermore, in some Countries it is necessary to ask to operators that regulate all the matter, the official permission for the instalment of a telephone apparatus and for the rent of a modem: also, the customs block the expansions of the nets preventing them from the passage of data  processing material, because this is seen as a menace in regard to the official control of information.

Our hope is that the ITC allow the developing Countries to make the so called “frog’s jump“, that is to start a virtuous circle able to lead them to full development without passing trough all the phases that traditionally involves such course.  

The project “Linux for Kagaene“, began on August of 2008, when Don Giovanni Battista Mbaabu, the parish priest of St. John The Baptist Church of Kagaene, visited the neighbouring mission of St. Massimo and saw how the new computer room worked (OsES realized it in cooperation with the Association Binario per l’Africa).

Once he came back to his mission, Don Giovanni wrote us a letter congratulating us on such initiative and asking in his turn our intervention.

Kagaene is a lonely village in the east of Kenia, in the region of Meru, and it is quite difficult to find geographic information about it.

The mission of St. John is particularly poor and isolated, but anyway, it offers a catholic church, a school and a dispensary to the local population.

This film is one of the few documents of the mission in our possession.

Some of the pictures here below, were given to us from the friends of the Association “Binario per l’Africa” that visited the mission the last summer.

The intervention of OsES aims to solve, first of all, a set of technical and logistic problems. With the help of Padre Giovanni it will be important to locate a suitable premises for the computer room. After this, it is necessary to realize the works for the renovation and arrangements of the wiring and network, to find the furniture and the office equipments.

Once the premises are arranged, we can proceed with the installation of notebooks. The donation of OsES will be completed with a searchlight and with a small stabilizer unit which is necessary to protect the notebooks against the changes of tension due to the precarious power supply, while the PC’s batteries will serve excellently as “continuity unit” and will allow the machines to work also during the hours in which there will be no power supply.

We will send them some notebooks which are particularly fit for their utilization in extreme conditions, the Toughbook Notebooks.

OsES will try to find such sets, used but in perfect conditions, through donors or distributors of used PC.

The Toughtbook is a portable computer projected for extreme uses, it is resistant to falls of 90 centimetres, to vibrations and to infiltrations of water and dust.

Its keyboard and monitor are resistant to water and to dust, necessary conditions for resisting to the climate of Kagaene which alternates seasons of torrential rains to long periods of drought.

As is our custom, we will send 5 computers, one will act as teaching position and will be able to control the others through the iTalc application.

The equipments will be reinstalled by OsES with the operating system Linux Ubuntu and with all the applications of Office Automation, didactic and multimedia (photo retouching, video and E-learning), necessary methods for giving to the future users, the possibility to experience and to entirely learn how to use the data processing tools.

Furthermore, for the youngsters we will pre-install a set of autodidactic tools, as well as videogames, and video material of all kinds (cartoons, documentaries and so on).

OsES will support, through a collaborator sent to Kagaene, all the phases of the room’s setting, of the computers’ installations and training.

At the end of his stay in St. John, the mission will be able to offer basic computer training courses to the local population.

The delivery date of computers is estimated on the 30^th of April of 2009.

If you are interested to give your contribution to the realization of this project, please contact us to the address info@oses.it

It’s by now all ready for celebrating the end of the year and we’d like to avail ourselves of the opportunity to offer to all the contributors, to the friends and to sympathizers, the wish of a 2009 rich of new and exhilarating experiences, both personal and professional.

We thank all those that, during this year, have shared the goals of OsES, have joined to our groups and to our activities, have spoken about us in their web sites.

The skills of each of them have been precious and have allowed us to reach an important know how: a legacy of experiences on which we’ll build the future of our Association.

In our intentions, 2009 will be a decisive year. We intend to continue the way covered till now and at the same time to work to a great aim: to give OseS an international presence with new, efficacious and innovative initiatives.

For reaching such aim we need to summon up all our experiences, ambitions and passions. Those which allowed us to get here and those which we do not know yet but which are to our reach.

Our warmest thanks to our little but brilliant team: to the associates, to the system analysts, to the translators and to those that directly or indirectly cooperated with us, bringing an idea, a contact or simply an appreciation.

Thanks a lot to those who gave us their old computers; we are sure that such number of donors will increase and will allow us to give a little but important contribution to the diffusion of the values of reuse, of donations and of non consumerist when this last is not justified by a real benefit.

Thanks a lot to those who joined to our Team in World Community Grid. By assembling the unused calculation capacity of our computers we gave to scientific research, in a little more than 2 months, nearly 1 year of run – time.

In other words we are proud to have been able to make a lot by giving up to make a profit or a personal interest, and above all, by maintaining unchanged our commitment, our professionalism and our honesty, that distinguish ourselves in our daily work and in the relationship with the others.

In 2009 we’ll further prove that in spite of the financial crisis, the crooks, the general decay, there are still people who want to believe in a better future and want their skills stand out, forgetting the egoistic interests for rediscovering an ethical way to conceive the progress.

“We’ll grow up together, this is our promise!”

This is our goal for 2009. We make such promise thinking, with the same enthusiasm, to the hopeful smile of many young men and women that are less lucky than us: those to whom we address our commitment and our efforts.

Wishes.
OseS Association

[Credits -- Original post: Stefano Ciccarelli - English version: Valentina Rossignoli - Versión española: Maribel Fernandez  - Pictures: Federico Bravi - Project: Scuola di St.Massimo, Meru - Kenya in cooperation with: Binario per L'Africa]

A Call for Papers on the following Thematic Priorities has been launched : eHealth – Health Information Systems, eInfrastructures, Technology Enhanced Learning and ICT Skills, Digital Libraries and Intelligent Content, Open Source Software – Applications, ICT for eInclusion and eAccessibility, ICT for Environmental Sustainability, RFID and Networked Enterprise, eGovernment – Services to Citizens & Business. [Original document: Europe's Information Society]

Hosted by the Government of the Republic of Uganda through the Ministry of ICT, Supported by the European Commission and Technical Co-Sponsored by IEEE, IST-Africa 2009 will take place 06 – 08 May 2009. Part of the IST-Africa Initiative, which is supported by the European Commission under the ICT Theme of Framework Programme 7 (FP7), IST-Africa 2009 is the fourth in an Annual Conference Series which brings together senior representatives from leading commercial, government & research organisations across Africa and from Europe, to bridge the Digital Divide by sharing knowledge and discussing policy related issues.

IST-Africa 2008 was very successful, attracting over 460 delegates from Europe & Africa. Plenary speakers included Ministers of Science and Technology/ICT from Namibia, Uganda, Tanzania and Kenya, Director-Generals from DG Information Society and Media and DG Research of the European Commission and DST South Africa, Directors from the African Union Commission, United Nations Economic Commission for Africa and SADC Secretariat. A high-level Round Table on the Implementation of the Africa-EU Partnership on Science, Information Society and Space took place during the Opening Plenary session, which was highly successful. The Conference Report provides an overview of the findings of the conference. [Original document: IST-Africa.eu]

We received a request of intervention for the realization of a new processing data room by the headmistress of the school “El Porvenir” in Iquitos (Peru’) as a consequence of a report of the Italian-Peruvian Association, Horizonte Verde. Since some months this association has been carrying out a project of environmental education and cultural interchange with the students of the Peruvian school.

Iquitos, the main town of the Peruvian region of Loreto, has about 724,300 inhabitants. It is located on the Amazon Rio and it is the biggest center of Peruvian Amazonia. It can not be reached by land but only by river or by plane.

El Porvenir – Pampachica is an area in the outskirt of Iquitos, partially built on pile-dwellings and it is forgotten by the town’s authorities.

The school “El Porvenir” N. 6010278 is located on the river’s bank and it is supported by “NUESTRO HORIZONTE VERDE” thanks to the project “Escuela Amiga”. The school is attended by the children that live in such a poor area that is partially flooded by the river in spate for about 6 months a year.

Two rooms of the school are still crumbling, the remaining part has been recently remodeled.

The project that OsES is realizing provides for a donation to the school of 5 notebooks ready to be connected among them and allowing the access on Internet.

Thanks to the access on Internet, the school will be able to use the OsES Website and to download the updating of the provided handbooks. Furthermore OsES will be able to reach the laptops for any maintenance or support interventions.

We wish that such project is a first positive test that will allow us to extend the presence and interventions of our Association in many other schools of Amazonic Peru.

If you do not use your computer, even for few minutes, you waste its computing capacity.

On the contrary, it could elaborate molecular analysis against AIDS, improve the comprehension of processes linked to the birth of cancer, and help the struggle against the worldwide problem of famine throughout the analysis of the protein structure of rice.

This can become true if you decide to give the unused computing capacity of your PC to the World Community Grid (WCG) created by IBM.

What is the World Community Grid? The Grid Computing is a technology that allows assembling a potentially unlimited number of single computers in one project of data processing.

This operation is already programmed in a central system: it “breaks” the complex counting into countless small data processing, it sends them to the linked computers, and it receives and consolidates the computing’s results.

In this way the processing time is potentially reduced, from decades to months.

World Community Grid is an association whose aim is to create a public net of distributed computing to go on with projects of scientific research for the benefit of humanity.

With more than 400,000 recorded users for a total of 1,115,147 processors, the “virtual system” realized by WCG already reached a total processing‘s time of 196,091 years. (?).

What does it mean to contribute to the World Community Grid? When a new user joins the WCG, it is required to set up a little software called BOINC (developed by the University of Berkeley) on his/her computer, totally innocuous and available for all the main operating systems. The software is connected up in an anonymous way to the server of WCG and it asks for a “portion” of data to process. Once received it, it remains waiting for the user of the computer to let it work. When this happens, it orders to the processor to process the assigned data’s portion. As soon as the computing capacity of processor is utilized by the computer’s user, the program stops the processing for WCG. All this operation works until the “portion” of data is completely processed. At this point the control software sends the result to the server of WCG which verifies it and acquires it. .

What does the contribution of OsES consist of? We created a computing team called OsES Association in the World Community Grid. Everybody can join the Team summing its computing capacity to that of the other members. In this way we expect to provide a significant contribution to a project of which we share the purposes but above all the approach to an “ethical” utilization of technology.

How do you join? The registration procedure to WCG and to the OsES Team is simple and free of charge, you have to click on one of the following links and record the required information.

For any other further explanation or need of support, our address is to your complete disposal.

The Translation Project has started and many website contents have been already translated in English. But help is always needed. At the moment we need to fix some pages and to publish the English, international website. Additionally we want to release a Spanish translation, as soon as possible.

Are you fluent in multiple languages? By contributing your translations, you will help OsES to make this site available in other countries and you will be part of a little team of people working to deliver our values. There are two different ways you can help the project: by translating the italian version of OsES webpages and by providing new interesting posts in your language.

You can become a member of the Translation Project by sending us an email. As a next step you will be included in a mailing-list and you will receive any updates concerning texts to be translated.

Should you have any other questions on where to start or what to do, please contact us.