Hello!
The problem. It’s a well know problem the challenges of organized civil society in the Global South to formalize some organizations in the not for profit sector. It ispossible to see this hapenning in Open Knowledge like minded movements, like Wikimedia, where strategies were build to face this problem.
Before joining Open Knowledge, firstly as a volunteer, later as a contractor in 2011 until formalizing our local chapter in mid 2013, I’ve been involved with Wikimedia since long time agor, attending to Wikimanias since 2009 and seeing all the very same discussions and unsucessfull trials (like the Catalyst Program Strategy, where I was involved through the education program in Brazil) to reduce this unbalanced distribution of chapters in the North-South divide.
Open Knowledge status. I believe a similar thing is happening in the Open Knowledge movement and I’d like to propose some discussions on what can we DO to change this situation. Today we have 9 Open Knowledge chapters around the world and only one is outside Europe. We’ve had recently a (online) chapters meeting and this issue was raised by me. Gladly, I was informed by @Mor that Argentina and India are trying to form their chapters!
Several related issues come to my mind here, like funding opportunities, unbalanced distribution of money for projects, local cultural and political challenges and so on, but we can discuss this all this further details if more people join this effort, be them ambassadors, local groups, chapters or interested people.
Open Knowledge Brazil proposal. Since we are already 2 years old since our funding on 4 September 2013 and we have had several learnings on our mistakes and successes, I’d like to invite my colleagues from the Global South willing to formalize their local groups to have regular calls to share our experiences and ideas on how to improve this actual scenario.
Last week, during the Open Knowledge meet up in Santiago, during the 3rd Abrelatam/Condatos, I’ve already discussed a little with @YasGarcia about talking to her and other hermanos to share our local experiences in Brazil. I’ve already started to discuss this with her in person, but let’s register this in a document and begin to systematize a strategy so the the Open Knowledge movement can reach every single person in the world.
Thoughts and suggestions about this issue is very welcome!
Related topics
- “Democratising the Data Revolution”, by Jonathan Gray