[bestbits] Capacity building assistance offer to digital rights advocates

[Becky Lentz]

(Please forward/post as appropriate, and excuse any unavoidable
cross-postings)

Dear colleagues,

Greetings from Montreal. As part of an ongoing experiment in cultivating
collaborative (vs. extractive) models for university-civil society
partnerships, I¹m writing to invite expressions of interest from potential
civil society partners for Fall 2015 (preferably from the Americas only,
excluding Canada and the US) seeking research that supports their
Internet-related policy advocacy work. Of particular interest are proposals
from groups involved in the IGF (or considering becoming involved in it).
Other proposals for research assistance are also invited, but discussion
would be needed to ensure the appropriate history/context can be
accommodated for research purposes.

As background, previous civil society partners have included Derechos
Digitales (DD) in Santiago and the Women of Uganda Network (WOUGNET) in
Kampala. Outcomes for two semester-long projects with DD include the
following research brief, which was developed by students and then
edited/translated/formatted by DD:
https://www.derechosdigitales.org/wp-content/uploads/PP05.pdf; we are now
completing a second project featuring a review of the literature (scholarly,
news, government, and civil society sources) about the benefits of the IGF
for civil society organizations, a report that anticipates the 2015 IGF in
Latin America. Testimonials and references from DD are available about how
DD has benefited from both of these collaborations.

The third semester-long project resulted in establishing 3
university-supported internships to help WOUGNET with a variety of capacity
building needs: an Information/ Communications Intern
(http://wougnet.org/2014/02/internship-opportunity-informationcommunications
-deadline-28th-february/), a Technical Support Intern
(https://www.mcgill.ca/arts-internships/files/arts-internships/wougnet_tech_
support_intern.pdf), and Gender and ICT Policy Advocacy
(https://www.mcgill.ca/arts-internships/files/arts-internships/wougnet_gende
r_and_ict_policy_advocacy_0.pdf).  Testimonials and references from WOUGNET
are also available.

The process for identifying a civil society partner for the Fall semester
2015 is now underway; it consists of the following steps: 1) an expression
of interest by a potential civil society partner; 2) based on a possible
match, an invitation for a short proposal (template will be provided); and
3) if selected, a jointly-crafted memorandum of understanding (MOU) between
the selected civil society partner and my class. There are no costs to the
partner organization other than a modest commitment of time during the
semester-long project.

If you have advocacy-related research needs and you think a
September-December timeframe for working together with a report available to
you in late December 2015 meets your needs, please feel free to contact me
off-list.

Best,
Becky Lentz
McGill University



       


-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.igcaucus.org/pipermail/bestbits/attachments/20150423/4ee6c0fe/attachment.htm>