The goal for this project is to facilitate community participation in governance. The overall purpose of the project is to promote greater involvement of the youth in the social discourse through the effective use of ICT. The project seeks to provide an ICT platform where over 8,000 active ICT users from Neno in southern Malawi can discourse their social development concerns. The project hopes to advance social economic development.
Topical focus:
Country:
What locality or neighborhood will your project focus on?
Neno
Describe the specific community with whom you will be working.
Neno is a hard to reach district in southern Malawi with a total population of 100,000 people. The district has witnessed developments in access to information communication technology tools such as GPRS Mobile phones. However while there is accessibility of ICT facilities, information sharing for community change remains one of the challenges that have to be exploited in this remote district.
What kinds of news, stories and other content will be created?
The project involves the development of a blog that will feature stories that will focus on social challenges being experienced by the local community. While the reach of the internet and ICT tools like GPRS phones has reshaped the nature of journalism, the Liwu Lathu blog will offer visitors a chance to enter into discourse through a social networking site. The success of the program will be measured by the number of followers to the site.
What technologies and digital tools do you plan to use in the trainings?
Describe the connections that you or your organization have already established that will contribute to the success of the project.
To reach its desired targets the project will mobilize youth who are the main users of ICT tools into clubs. Each club will have a team that will be equipped with basic journalism skills which will be used in the agenda setting factor for social discourse on the social networking site. The forum will be a public domain and shall encourage followers.
How many participants do you think will be involved in your project?
To reach its intended goals, the programme will train ten youths in basic journalism skills so that they became part of the moderation team of the discourse going on the social networking site. The trained youths will also facilitate community discussion forums that will shape the course of the discourse to be featured on the blog. For sustainability of their participation, youth will be regularly involved in continuous training programmes.
Besides the microgrant funding, what other resources and support are you seeking for your project to ensure its success?
To reach its full potential, the Liwu lathu (Our Voices) project will learn from the success stories from other societies that have benefited from the same program. While the program is a social communication programme seeking to change the people’s social attitudes through the effective use of ICT ,it is hoped that learning visits to some of the successful raising voices funded programmes are organised in the course of the programme would boost
Contact name
Madalitso Wills Kateta