The strategic partnership starts with Hivos funding OneWorld in a
NLG 1.690.000 (EUR 3.470.000) three-year programme to increase the
content on the world wide web from developing countries and bring
NGOs based in the South into the OneWorld network of civil
society organisations.
The major initiative includes helping NGOs go online with support
and training, launching major new portals based in the South to
focus on global issues and building online gateways promoting
regional perspectives from civil society in Africa, Latin America and
South Asia. All 800 Southern-based Hivos partners in 30 countries will be
invited to join the OneWorld network (currently just over 700
organisations). OneWorld is to offer Hivos partners a membership
package that will include capacity building to help the
organisations use the Internet effectively as a publishing,
networking and advocacy tool. OneWorld will also promote their
content to strengthen regional online editions of OneWorld.net and
other editorial sections of the OneWorld.net supersite.
Hivos is the first of the Dutch co-financing development agencies to
outline its vision of the role of ICT (Information and Communications
Technology) in sustainable development.
Hivos aims to support NGOs in developing countries in using the
opportunities provided by the information revolution, says Loe
Schout, Head of Hivos ICT programme.
OneWorld is the leading Internet platform for NGOs. With its extensive network, high quality portal website as well as its expertise in ICT and development cooperation, we selected OneWorld as a key partner in the
struggle against the imminent worldwide digital divide compounding the existing gap between rich and poor.
A great number of organisations based in some of the poorest
countries of the world want the opportunity to use the Internet to
further their work at the front line of reducing human suffering and
poverty alleviation, says Anuradha Vittachi, Director of OneWorld
International Foundation. With the support of Hivos, OneWorld will
be able to bring our experience of working with hundreds of NGOs
worldwide to help them do just that.
It is vitally important that perspectives from the South are part of
the worldwide debate on global issues. Marginalised voices must
be able to reach beyond the digital divide to the rest of the world
and those working at a grassroots level in developing countries
must have access through the Internet to the information and
knowledge they need.
Hivos is a development organisation, which stands for emancipation, democratisation and poverty alleviation in developing
countries. For this purpose financial support is given to more then
800 local independent organisations in more than 30 countries in
Africa, Asia, Latin America and South-east Europe.
OneWorld is a non-profit organisation that aims to harness the
democratic potential of the Internet to promote sustainable
development and human rights. Its website OneWorld.net is the
world’s leading portal on global justice and a gateway to over 700
NGOs worldwide.