Document Actions
Rural e-Commerce for Women Entrepreneurs Grant Proposal
A discussion area for a grant proposal that has as a goal opening international trade opportunities for women entrepreneurs, focusing on three sister communities: a Native American one, a rural US community, and a Middle Eastern one.
Since we don't yet have the Women's Empowerment list server set up, I thought I'd take this opportunity to share with you a recent development. Yesterday I received the following from Frank Odasz, an IT consultant with a constituency in Native American communities (http://www.lone-eagles.com). Frank and I have been corresponding since last summer when Chrissy Hoffman and I attended a conference on distance learning, IT infrastructure support to remote locales, IT opportunities for indigenous peoples, and computer-augmented social networking in rural New Mexico.
Frank is suggesting that he and I write a grant proposal emphasizing "women entrepreneurs with opening international trade opportunities as a goal." He further suggests that we identify a Native American community, a rural US community, and an international sister village or town as foci for the proposal. Finally, Frank is open to the idea of using a Plone site as a collaborative cornerstone of the project.
To give you an idea of the scale Mr. Odasz is looking at, he has been working in Wolf Point, Montana this past week (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolf_Point,_Montana). With a population of about 2700 and only 3500 nearby, it lies almost on the US-Canada border. One could hardly pick a place more different from the Middle East, but... it shares many commonalities with some villages in your region: infrastructure issues, remoteness, rugged terrain, low population density, and poor economic development opportunities.
I will have an opportunity, inshallah, to meet with Frank in January and perhaps work out some details. In the mean time, I'd like to open the door to discussion of the concept and to begin accumulating nominations for an appropriate Middle Eastern sister locale for the proposal.
Your thoughts, please.
-----Original Message-----
From: Frank Odasz [mailto:frank@lone-eagles.com]
Sent: Wednesday, November 14, 2007 6:41 AM
To: Horak, Karl
Subject: A Ten Step Model for Rural Ecommerce
Karl,
Here's a tale of three cities, in a ten step model which you might find of interest.
http://lone-eagles.com/top-expanded.htm
Pick a sister city in Indian country, one as non-native rural, and you pick one. We could have the project emphasize women entrepreneurs with opening international trade opportunities as goal.
Ever since I did the first Internet workshops for Alaskan Native villages in '97, I've been writing village empowerment models as grant templates. I have extensive curriculum and implementation plans. I'll be in Las Cruces Jan. 13-16 to present for the western states RCD rural dev. orgs on this topic. And to meet with NMLN and NMSU regarding professional service contracts. Hintamundo!!!
Plone could be used to create a collaborative site sketched at
http://lone-eagles.com/nativeheart.htm Setting the right context is a
very important component which I've been focusing on lately - making it personal and collaborative.
Comeback,
Frank
Notes from yesterday.
Sustainability is the key to any of these projects. The delivery of effective broadband connectivity for economic development is hampered by a lack of high level vision and the telecommunications industry apparently is not interested in working with community training. World-wide demographics are shifting with a majority in the youngest age quartile. A number of web resources were mentioned (http://www.lone-eagles.com/pcna1.htm, http://www.greenstar.org/, http://culturematters.wordpress.com/2007/07/19/rich-ethnographic-reports-about-the-uses-of-ict-in-low-income-communities/, and many others).
Early adopters and innovators who have had successes move quietly ahead and are not often acknowledged. A survey project to inventory rural e-commerce efforts and take a census of their success or failure would be worthwhile. Such a project would also provide hard data on what works and what does not, which could then be fed into a pilot project making use of proven best practices.
A 1-2 page concept note should be prepared following the idea of "A Tale of Three Cities" focusing on women entrepreneurs and rural e-commerce for international cooperation and trade. Such a concept note should be presented to potential sponsoring foundations. F2F meeting in Las Cruces in mid-January is likely.
Funding for "empowerment communication technologies"
Empowering Women
Just a note to say "Howdy from Montana." And to share briefly a link to my main resources http://lone-eagles.com/future-proofing.htm
I have written many grant templates http://lone-eagles.com/rural-grant-templates.htm and many for Alaskan Native and American Indian commmunities, http://lone-eagles.com/afn-resources.htm
Three articles I'll recommend as introductions to Lone Eagle resources
http://lone-eagles.com/wings.htm http://lone-eagles.com/village-sustainability.htm http://lone-eagles.com/history.htm
For fun you can google "lone eagle consulting" my past project "Big Sky Telegraph" and/or "Frank Odasz"
We are all connected in the most fundamental of ways,
Frank Odasz Lone Eagle Consulting