The guest of Honor at the launch, was Mr Jim Barry-CEO NTR PLC. Mr Barry was accompanied by Mr Donal Tierney, Director of NTR PLC and CEO of Bimeda Holdings, PLC.

Mr Barry and Mr Tierney, toured the MITC campus,met with the principal, heads of departments and other dignitaries who had been invited. They both planted trees, and toured the Camara-Kenya hub.

At the speeches Mr Barry spoke about the importance of education and tecnnology transfer through ICT. I spoke about sustainable development, and our oldest current Volunteer, Mr Hassan (61yrs), spoke about how grateful he was to Camara. He can now repair his own computer, he is completely independent.

We then had a graduation and all the trainees who had undergone skill-builder training since August were awarded certificates, including Mr Hassan. All the 15 core volunteers were awarded with certificates of recognition for their hard work and continued support in bringing the project to where it is.

Entertainment was provided by A troupe of Giriama (a Bantu tribe on the
Kenya coast) traditional dancers, and acrobats.

Thanks to all was given by Mr Farid Ali, Camara Africa Technical Director.
Mr Barry thanked everyone and promised that when in Kenya…he
will always make a point to visit the hub.

Lastly I once again thank the entire Camara team and I also thank all
the Volunteers in Kenya. IT IS THROUGH THE VOLUNTEER SUPPORT THAT WE
HAVE REACHED HERE.

- Daudi, CEO, Kenya Hub, Mobasa

If you have an old computer lying around, leave it into the Camara NUIG drop-off hub at Lower Newcastle Rd, beside the student AIB bank, on the first Wednesday of every month between 10am-4pm.

A donation of €20 is asked per computer, which goes towards the cost of sending the computers to Africa and maintaining the computer centres there. Camara NUIG has been set up with the support of NUI Galway and DERI Outreach Programme .

For more information, contact Deirdre on 091-495336 or email deirdre.lee@camara.ie.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/8554298.stm

Like a lot of people I got interested in Development through Geldof, I think he’s very impressive here

1. A single person from Lesotho is Mosotho. (So for example Mark is Irish, Makhetha is Mostotho)

2. Multiple people from Lesotho are Basotho (Mark and David are Irish, Makhetha and John are Basotho)

3. The adjective is also Basotho (so the Basotho flag, the Basotho context etc)

4. The language is Sesotho

5. And as far as I can make out the word ‘Lesothian’ doesn’t exist.

Contact: Ann Fitzpatrick, Camara, Unit 23 Townsend Enterprise Park, Belfast BT13 2ES
Tel: 90332470 Email: belfast@camara.ie

For more information on the Marathon entry procedures email belfast@camara.ie subject Belfast City Marathon or phone 02890332470.

Camara-Kenya team would like to thank you all for making this
possible. You can enjoy the pictures showing the container
arrival and unpacking twenty minutes ago on Flickr

Daudi.
CEO, CAMARA EDUCATION LTD KENYA
LOCATION: MOMBASA DIGITAL HUB [MITC]
MOMBASA – MALINDI ROAD NEXT TO KRA SCHOOL
P.O. BOX 1039 GPO-80100
MOMBASA KENYA

Camara Kenya receive their latest shipment

* Camara made 18 Dublin City Council retired IT hardware collections in 2009 and to date in 2010.
* Camara have amassed over 350 computers in these collections making DCC one of Camara’s largest clients

* 75% of the computers have gone to schools in Kenya and Ethiopia and have will impact the ICT education of over 7600 children in 2010
* Retired computers in Dublin City Council have been sourced from a diverse range of functions including Roads and Traffic, Public Lighting, Health & Safety, Housing, Rates, IS, Legal, Human Resources, Finance and Waste Management Services. All dta has been wiped to US military standards.

* Mark Bennett Dublin City Council Green Business Officer has been huge help in facilitating departments who wish to send their retired IT hardware to Camara
* Assuming that 75% of DCC’s computers have been reused, the deferred Co2 emission savings from the reuse of DCC’s retired computers is in excess of 170,000 kgs.

* DCC also ran a successful green initiative where we collected retired home computers from their staff in a one day collection promotion at the Civic Office HQ.

Mark Fox
Social Hardware Manager
T: +353 (0) 1 65 22673 M: +353 (0) 87 6679405
E: mark@camara.ie

Where I come from in the Development sphere, and really the only thing I knew a lot about prior to joining Camara, is empowerment. It’s become a sanitised, dull, politically-correct term but at its core is one of the most concrete notions in human society. Essentially, when you strip away all the waffle it’s the process of acquiring power. Development (what everyone at the meeting does as a career), when you define it properly is just positive change. Development and power then are two sides of the same coin, since power is ‘the ability to do or act; capability of doing or accomplishing something’, essentially to effect change.

Some of the really great Development theorists point to increasing the power of poor people as being the key to real Development. Power can be exerted over oneself or over others. Power over others is obviously relative, since the more power you have over somebody else the less power they have over you. On this basis some of the theorists would say that you can’t really empower other people because by definition you have the ability to withdraw it so it’s pretty impotent and not really power. Also there’s the difficulty that (and this is where the current favoured ideology in Development circles really devours itself) it inevitably treats the NGO actor as the subject and the beneficiary as the object.

Camara isn’t about sending computers to schools. Infuriatingly we’ve all been telling people that for four years but as a way to spend our days that would be pretty banal. Nor do we provide education to kids in Africa; in fact we only really come into direct contact with them when we’re doing M&E. In reality we offer technology solutions to schools so they can do a better job of educating their students. We’re still trying to implement the model properly, but that’s the core of our business. It encompasses training, hardware provision, maintenance, mentoring, and curriculum design.

The thing is all of these things are available on the open market. Schools don’t have the money to invest in them but as tax payers and people who give to charity we could probably sort that out for them without NGOs to implement the project. Camara, like 95% of NGOs, is actually a basic service provider. We don’t directly empower kids in the slightest and it’s not our job. We support schools that are actually supposed to be bringing all of the higher deliverables like education and human development, but in many cases are awful at it.

What we’re supposed to be achieving is supporting an education system where kids go to school, get educated and get power. We provide the inputs that their schools need to get better at making their students powerful. All of the inputs have local market values. Either we do it better and cheaper than the market can, or we should just give them the money and go and do something else.

Aid Effectiveness.