[Sigiii-l] Plaza- What if

[Pamela McLean]

Victoria Kravchyna wrote:

>(snip)
>What if people in university departments (or other organisations with relevant interests) helped people "on the other side of the digital 
>divide" to become "e-mail pen-pals" with them, in order to address issues of shared interest?
>
>Not sure it will ever happen though. (snip)
>
By encouraged Victoria - This "supported pen-pal idea" is already 
happening in small ways, so maybe, like you suggest, bigger 
organisations will do it too (maybe some already are!). When enough of 
us are doing it in an informal way, then perhaps the people who set up 
formal systems will make it a reality that is simple to use. Then anyone 
in the "developed world" who wants to exchange emails with people in the 
"developing world" will be able to shift the burden of costs to the 
"developed" side as easily as purchasing other online goods and services. .

In our situation we are physically sending money from the UK to the 
people that you would describe as our "pen-pals". This is difficult to 
arrange as our "pen-pals" in Nigeria are in a rural area, in a cash 
based economy, with few banks or bank accounts. However we are gradually 
hammering out a system, using various trusted intermediaries, to get the 
cash to the "pen-pals". It would be easier if we could set up an account 
for our "pen-pals" at the cyber cafe, instead of trying to actually get 
the money out to the individuals in the community. We are also currently 
sending money from the UK to someone in Kenya. As he does have a bank 
account, that is much easier, but still expensive to arrange. He, in 
turn, has sent up an account with his local cyber cafe, so he is not 
always needing cash to pay for his online time.

Obviously every time we send money to Africa we incur bank-charges or 
Western Union fees. As we can only afford to send a little at a time, 
the charges greatly inflate the overall costs. We are a very small 
organisation and so every penny counts (for more about our work, 
including our fund raising, see www.bmycharity.com/cawd1) People in the 
diaspora wanting to keep in touch with family back home, by email, must 
face similar problems.

It would be so much easier if we could simply agree some regular (fail 
safe) arrangement whereby we got billed, here in the UK, by the cyber 
cafes, for the emails that our "pen-pals" exchange with us from Nigeria 
(or Kenya). I used to do reverse charge phone calls to my parents when I 
was young. Paying for pen-pals' emails shouldn't be that much more 
difficult. Obviously, agreeing to accept phone call charges was easier, 
because both people were online at the some time, but there must be ways 
around the problems. We wouldn't mind paying something in advance, and 
then topping it up as necessary.

What if people in "developed countries" could cover the costs of their 
pen-pals' emails - what kind of pen-pals would they like to have?

What if international development agencies could "cut out the 
middle-man" (consultants who go and make contact with various groups) 
and get to contact the groups more directly through local representative 
pen-pals?

What if it was really easy to make emails affordable for our friends, 
families, or colleagues in "developing countries"?

Pamela McLean
Cawd volunteer and CawdNet convenor
CawdNet – Networking in rural Nigeria and within the virtual communities 
of the Internet.
This blog introduces CawdNet http://www.cawdnet-intro.blogspot.com
(The blog is a temporary solution to providing information while we lack 
a web master)