No two UK-Nigeria meetings are the same and this week was no exception. Although prior to each meeting I email an agenda this is only a guideline and acts as a memory jogger to ourselves to review certain aspects of the many Fantsuam Foundation projects .
This week after item number one the agenda which is always “Meet and Greet”, John Dada used the hourly typed meeting to help formulate his thoughts and ideas.
Although this is often a part of what our meetings are for this was the first time that we have devoted a whole meeting to such a spontaneous specific need.
At the beginning of the meeting John informed us that he had been asked to make a keynote address at a Women's ICT Conference.High Tech Centre for Nigerian Women and Youths, Obafemi Awolowo University. They also wish to confer an award on Comfort for her work.
John plans to present a speech on "Entrepreneurship Opportunities for Women’s in ICT and Sustainability: Experiences from Fantsuam Foundation"
John explained further:
“It’s an Abuja audience with women who are in private and public ICT sector and loads of Government folks. The audience is largely urban, well fed folks. They probably have looked, but never really SEEN the kind of folks Fantsuam Foundation works with. Our kind are actually in the majority in Nigeria, but hardly seen or heard.
I think it will help keep us in the limelight, and hopefully someone there will really see what we are doing and want to replicate it for their communities”.
By the end of our hourly typed Skype conversation (which consisted largely of a lively exchange between John and Pamela Mclean) John declared:
"Knowledge Working, GLOCAL, ICT4D, other oportunites I want /need......Connection to other countries, teaching Women, Teachers and Comfort's role I think the highlights of the speech is already coming together! I think one of the highlights of my speech must be the weekly Nigeria-UK high level consultations of Dadamac.”
Pamela commented: “You are a fantastic example of "glocal" (global - local) in action - you are what ICT4D should be about”.
Pamela went explained that this is why we set up Dadamac - i.e so we could could make things easier for people who were deciding policy etc to have the information they really need: Dadamac - the Internet-enabled alternative to top-down development
We were reminded that we had contributed to the ICT4D 2010 conference.
My dreams of ICT4D - by Kazanka Comfort - Nigeria
ICTD2010 - A response from John Dada, Fantsuam, North Central Nigeria
ICTD2010- Let's Bridge Those Divides by Pamela McLean
Other news:
Comfort and Tayo are representing FF at a workshop in Abuja. It's a workshop for all recipients of the Small Grant Program of the Global Environmental Facility, GEF-SGP
The GEF-SGP is another new support for Attachab.
John explained that Abuja Technology Village Foundation, ATVF a Quango
visited FF over a year ago, and called him last week to discuss areas of collaboration. They have a CEO who insists they must work with FF as he has visited them
They have a lot of access to Government, private sector etc and will probably also be in the audience.
I will ask John to share his key note speech after the event and then put it up as a blog as is typical Dadamac/Fantsuam policy.
Photo above shows Pamela delivering the Teachers Talking Course