[Chapter-delegates] Issues facing Chapters

[Chris Mulola]

Hi Gihan, Alexandro, Charles and all,

Africa is totally particular in its ways, here in Rwanda for a newspaper to
write about an event you have organized, you have to call the owner, pay
him and he will write about you.

For RwIGF, which is our national IGF, we have no funding issues as the
government promotes the event, the only issue is that it lacks activities,
it is only active before the East  African one. In KENYA, people like Alice
Munyua will always get you funds for your local IGF. And for the EAIGF,
ISOC African Bureau always takes care of that, they pay  mostly for 2
candidates from each eastafrican country to participate.

THE ONLY MISTAKE that we have always been FIGHTING is ISOC giving those
funds to local governments instead of channeling that aid through local
chapters. Now this is  the time for Tanzania and Tanzania does not even
have a chapter, i guess eaigf aid should go through a chapter in a
neighboring country to arrange for people to participate in EAigf  in Dar
Es Salam. This will demonstrate  again how ISOC  global values its chapter
and push Tanzania into also starting a chapter, we should be always
diplomatic. Last time, support  went through ISOC Burundi - the last eaigf
had been announced  to take place in Burundi - and it was great.

Now we do  not even know whether eaigf2014 will take place or not,
Tanzanian Team has been silent ts been 2 months now, but thats another
issue.

Regarding the $2000 in developing countries, that amount is too little, in
Rwanda that would be 3 months salary  for an average worker. African
chapters should be given more, like we do not have the same advantages as
in richer countries.

As for Burkina Faso and it is great to have membership fees, but for us we
decided not to have that as the members will always ask for something in
return that we are not in a position to offer. I once proposed a solution
to ISOC global but it has  been neglected up to now - maybe it does not
make sense.

My proposition was:
ISOC GLOBAL  has a huge reservoir of IT engineers, it should identify like
3 members from every chapter in a developing  country, take these members,
offer them trainings and send them back to their respective countries. Once
back, they need to start the same trainings  at cheaper costs and the money
gained will be used for chapter administration and visibility. Governments
will be happy and they will value much local chapters like nobody dislikes
a provider. This will prompt chapters into having more say on the ICT
economy and policies for which they will be much regarded as major
contributors.
(Give me  a fish and i will eat for a day but teach me how to fish i will
eat for a lifetime) This is much like give me $2000, and i will ask for
more but give me something to provide to the government and local ICT
hungry population for a win-win and i will not ask for your support anymore.

Best regards,

Chris Mulola
President, ISOC Rwanda
On May 21, 2014 3:40 PM, "Gihan Dias" <gihan at uom.lk> wrote:

>  On 2014/05/21 ප.ව. 4:41, Charles Oloo wrote:
>
> Gihan, That is a brief of our current situation.
>
> Charles,
>
> Thanks. It is very instructive.
>
> Regards,
>
> Gihan
>
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