Collaborative GrantProposal:Background-information
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The initial email for grant proposal collaboration went out to the people with whom I, Joanne Clemente, have contact in Uganda. Since I am involved with the TATS organization who hosted my trip in Uganda, I contacted Larry Maka.
I also contacted people from Makerere University (Connie Masembe, the Dean) and Kampala University (Daniel Bwanika, Director of Development). I also asked Larry Maka to find a lead person at Kisubi Brothers University as I have been in contact with some teachers there. I also contacted my colleague and travel partner, Dr. Brenda Dressler, who gave HIV/AIDS prevention lectures to teachers and students while we were in Uganda last June. My contact at OLPC where the XO project originated is Adam Holt who passed our inquiry to interested parties. I also contacted Lidet Tilahun who is an OLPC director located in Ethiopia and has much experience in deployments in Africa. She has suggested partnering with WarChild.
I also reached out to two more colleagues: 1- Elizabeth Ross from Harvard, who has successfully deployed an XO project in Uganda (Kasiisi Project) and who is currently in Uganda was also contacted. 2-Kenneth Mwandara who has a Kampala based Technology Center called Silver Shadows who has helped with training and XO repairs.
Another colleague, Nick Doiron, then contacted me as he was a volunteer with Elizabeth Ross’ Kasiisi project. He suggested I contact the NGO , Amagezi Gemaanyi Youth Association (AGYA) (Divinity is lead person) who has since expressed interest in participating and Stuart Campo from Straight Talk magazine (heavy emphasis on HIV/AIDS content). I also reached out to Global Pulse, a think tank in Kampala at his suggestion.
This is how it began.
Since then, many more people have been contacted, many interested in research. While research can be one aspect of this grant application, the main goal is to empower vulnerable children, orphans, many of whom have been victimized by HIV/AIDS.
Thus far, then, we have interest from Kampala University, and Kisubi Brothers as the lead person there will be Vincent Ssekate, the Dean.
So, as of January 12, 2011, this is the background information. From this point forward, we should collaborate on the main page. As people add their contributions, I will edit and place content into different sections of our proposal.
Additional information from Kampala Director of Research-Dr. Ronald Ssemyalo - January 18, 2011- progress is being made:
Dear Joanne,
Thank you so much for your emails and the wonderful project that you are coordinating. I am grateful to be one of the recepients of your emails am assuming on the advise (/inclusion) of Mr Dan Bwanika. I have had a chance of visiting the wiki and I see that alot of work has already been done. The project suggests that Ugandan teachers will be trained in the use of the tools (XO machines-I actually found one of our lecturers using one in Jinja while on a visit there, last week) particularly to teach about HIV/AIDS. You also mentioned that Dr.Brenda Dressler will oversee the curriculum to be used for the pupils. However this November we had a couple of professors visiting our university from Cornell and while we were interacting with our students (Bachelor of Education Biology, Chemistry), we discovered that they too are in great need of a well designed programme (curriculum) on how to teach about HIV/AIDS. Therefore I am suggesting that one addition component of this project would be not only to train the inservice teachers how to use the machines but also to train them on how to desseminate the information. If you find this useful Kampala University would also be glad to collaborate with Dr.Brenda Dressler in desiging a programme to traing the inservice teachers on dessiminating the information that needs to get out there.
Secondly concerning How and who will monitor progress, assess results, keep tabs on student and teacher learning, I believe that we at Kampala University can contribute greatly to this. We have the resource persons as well as already established infrastructure especially in monitoring students and our teachers. We also have a well tested system of assessing and monitoring the results of such a learning programme, If it is acceptable for all we would be glad draft a write up on how this may/will be done. Since Connie may have a better track record on dealing with the USAID grants we would be glad to collaborate with her on designing the whole plan including the monitoring of funds.
Lastly I gladly pledge the resources at our research office to the successful completion of this project I wish to reiterate that will capably work on the tax issues you mentioned, you will recieve answers to the questions you asked Kampala University (in the wiki) before the end of the week. I will endevour to make my contributions on the wiki.
Best wishes,
Director of Research
Kampala University P.O. Box 25454,Kampala-Uganda Tel: +256 792 601 797
My response:
Dear Dr. Ssemyalo Ronald
Yes, Yes and Yes
Dr. Brenda Dressler will coordinate with you and your colleagues.
We are happy to have you do the writing and monitoring of progress and results. Excellent!!!
We would love for you to collaborate with Connie at Makerere (he is male) if he is able to contact you. I am still waiting to hear but Larry Maka will make a visit today to inquire.
One more yes:
If we can eliminate or reduce the taxes associated with receiving this aid for computers, all will be sincerely grateful.
If someone else can take some responsibility for pricing the internet access, that would be wonderful. If those at Verizon or Google can help to coordinate with local ISP providers, please indicate in a "Reply all" if you can or cannot (so we can move on) Nick Doiron has provided this link for possible contact http://www.mtn.co.ug/MTN-Internet/MTN-Broadband.aspx
So far, we have Jinja district identified. Elizabeth Ross would like the Kabarole District (which is in Fort Portal but because she has a successful XO project going, she can identify a path of progress and help us to avoid pitfalls) This experience is invaluable. She will make contact with the University of the Mountain of the Moons which can provide services in that area.
Kisbui Brothers and Makerere University have yet to identify the district they would like to focus on. Larry will visit to get them up to date.
NGOs: (Amagezigemaany) (CARE), can you take on the responsibility of providing resources to help with nutrition, maintaining good health and some computer training.
Silver Shadows has committed to help with training and installations and repairs as Kenneth Mwandara runs a Technology company. He is also going to form a consortia of the Ugandan participants so that you can meet other than at times when a US representative is present.
Ultimately, I want you to see this as a Ugandan project supported fully by US professionals.
Also, we are eliminating Stuart Campo from the list as he is being replaced by Susan Ajok for the Straight Talk publication component. This will be content provided to primary school students as it addresses HIV/AIDS prevention in a language children will understand.
Thanks to all of you. Keep the faith!
Joanne
New Requests by email: Hello everyone, We have a new challenge. I am told that if we can get a nearly finished proposal in ONE week, we will be able to have a director at OLPC review it. He is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Sj
I will be sitting at my computer all day, so if you can send me some information, I can integrate it. Are you having trouble adding to the http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Collaborative_GrantProposal ? Would you prefer another format? Please let me know.
In general, we need to know
- 1-pricing of connecting the laptops to the internet for each district. Some of you are working on that.
- 2-Numbers of teachers needing training (remember we will write for the 1st of 5 years)
- 3-Number of students needing computers
- 4-Content- Sex, health, HIV education leave this to Dr. Brenda Dressler (brendres@aol.com ) to coordinate so please write to her with proposals and ideas.
- 5-How we will integrate it all to the XO- leave this to Nick ndoiron@andrew.cmu.edu (who will communicate in part with Brenda and Susan from Straight Talk
- 6-After school programs and resources for caregivers- leave this to Amagezigemaanyi(amagezigemaanyi@gmail.com)- has to be placed in the content (so Nick or Brenda will take this information)
- 7-Teacher training- several levels of this- by university, by district- some will be done remotely (US universities), some in person (SilverShadows (lacdof@gmail.com ), Amagezigemaany, volunteers)
- 8-Installations and Repairs-SilverShadows
- 9-Monitoring of progress- Dr. Semyalodirector of research sr0001@ku.ac.ug ; (Kampala) in cooperation with Dr. Masembe csmasembe@yahoo.com and any other university who can contribute to their district's monitoring.
- 10-Coordination of volunteers and other US "ambassadors" - Elizabeth Ross and myself.
Again, I apologize because I see some people are getting left off the reply all--please join the group at yahoo as per previously sent emails, so this would go alot faster and easier :-)
WE NOW HAVE A YAHOO GROUP AND ALL SUBSEQUENT EMAILS ARE DOCUMENTED THERE. GO TO HTTP://WWW.YAHOOGROUPS.COM AND SIGN UP USING YOUR EMAIL ADDRESS. YOU WILL SEE THE GROUP US_UG_COLLABORATORS@YAHOOGROUPS.COM
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