[Greennet-l] GreenNet Newsletter March 2001

Fri Mar 16 10:34:21 GMT 2001

GreenNet have been awarded funding from the European Social Fund (ESF).
This funding will part-fund renovations to our training room, improve
training facilities and provide increased access to training, over a two
year period. 

The project builds forth from the work of the APC WNSP (Womens Networking
Support Programme), which works to promote gender awareness in Internet
design, implementation and use. 

Funding means we can extend our training programme to include women-only
training sessions and trainings specially tailored to the needs of
employees of small NGOs. 

We hope that it will benefit all who come to GreenNet for training! Have a
look at the training update overleaf for details of new courses.
For further information, please email: coord at gn.apc.org

***************

Internet Rights (IR) workshop
- ---------------------------------

APC European members met in Prague from February 18 to 22 to plan a
defense of the Internet for social justice work.

Workshop participants included:  lawyers, computer programmers, academics,
and communications activists mainly from East and West Europe. APC staff
and members also came from the USA, South Africa, Korea, Japan and
elsewhere.

"APC is committed to giving a voice to activists and civil society groups 
who want to defend the Internet as an accessible and secure communications
medium", says Karen Banks from GreenNet. Karen is the APC Europe Internet
Rights project manager.
In the past, APC members and partners defended Website content which had
been threatened by unreasonable government and commercial interests in
South Korea, South Africa, the UK and Spain.  At the Prague conference,
the participants discussed various strategies to respond to these threats.
Among these is a Rapid Response Network (RRN) that would set up a
technically and legally robust system to automatically replicate
threatened content across the Internet within 24 hours.

Other participants pointed out that the rapid commercialization of the 
Internet and emerging global and national controls pose clear threats to
what should be a free and open communications medium.

At the conclusion of the conference, the participants reached broad
consensus that defending Internet rights is as much a defense of human
rights as it is of people's right to communicate, regardless of where they
live, social status, sex, political or religious belief.
For further information, please email: ir at gn.apc.org

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APC WNSP (Womens Networking Support Programme) January workshop
-
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

35 women from 16 countries participated in the workshop "Building An ICT
Gender Evaluation Tool", in Manilla, January 17-21. The workshop was held
to develop a framework for integrating a gender perspective in the
evaluation of the social impacts of ICT's and build the capacity of WNSP
in ICT evaluation. 

Participants discussed tools and criteria that took into consideration the
diversities of women's experiences and analyses, as well as women's
strategic gender interests and practical gender needs, when evaluating the
role and use of ICT in development projects from a gender perspective. 

For more information about the APC WNSP check out:
http://www.apcwomen.org

***************

Ethical Consumer report
- ---------------------------

For those of you who haven't  recently looked at the GreenNet home page,
GreenNet are voted  ethical Internet Service Provider (ISP) "best buy" in
the United Kingdom, in a recent issue of Ethical Consumer Magasine.

Their study looked at the 10 largest UK ISPs and 2 alternative ISPs
(GreenNet and Poptel) and evaluated them on issues such as: environmental
reporting, pollution, oppressive regimes, workers' rights, and
irresponsible marketing. GreenNet scored the top rating in all categories
and is voted as the best buy, followed by Poptel and WorldOnline. 

***************
Leased Line Upgrade
- -----------------------

We have just doubled the capacity of our leased line, the connection to
the Internet which allows you to pick up mail, we hope you have  noticed
the huge difference it has made! The line has a flexible  capacity and in
the future can be easily upgraded consumate with the demand on our
service.

If you have not noticed a significant difference it is worth contacting:
support at gn.apc.org  
Please include the specification of your PC and your modem speed.

***************

Networker of the year
- -------------------------

Doesn't time fly ! Nominations for our annual networker of the year award
have just opened. Please read the following rules and get those
nominations coming in.

'Networker of the year' is an annual award open to people and
organisations that successfully use 
electronic mail, mailing lists and/or web sites to link people to
information and activities in the fields of development and social
justice.

All you need to do is the following:

1.  Send us the name and e-mail address of the person or organisation you
wish to nominate. 
2.  Write a short 
description of how they used networking tools, mention which tools were
use for what activity. Mention which groups  and communities participated
in the process. 
3.  Let us know why you feel this organisation or person deserves to be
given this award.

Criteria:
l The organisation/ person should be a GreenNet subscriber.
l Email nominations to: 
support at gn.apc.org  
Closing date for 
nominations is:  
Tuesday the 1st May 2001.

***************

Personal Firewalls
- --------------------

Firewalls are used to protect your computer from 'intrusions' either from
hackers or types of scanning software whilst you are online.
Traditionally firewalls were only used on computer networks, but now with
numbers of home Internet users increasing, and intrusive technologies
being introduced to gather information from PC's, there are a lot of home
firewall products available.

Zone alarm is a basic personal firewall and is available free for personal
and non-profit use.  It allow you to set up alarms for certain internet
traffic patterns and a variety of security levels whilst you are online.  

We don't recommend it for beginners but the hobbyists and security
concious among you will find it useful. You'll be suprised at what you
see. Download from: http://www.zonelabs.com

***************

Strategic Planning Phase 2
- ------------------------------

We are going to complete phase 2 of our strategic planning on Monday 26th
and Tuesday 27th March

During these two days the office will be staffed, but we will only be
responding to messages at intervals throughout the day.

You can input to this 2nd phase. we would really encourage you to fill in
the on-line  questionnaire at: www.gn.apc.org/services/question

This feedback from you will  guide us in planning our activities for the
next year, and enable us to to benefit you in your work as fully as
possible.

***************

Billing
- -------
A big thank you to everyone for being patient with the billing situation
over the last few months.
This is the first of the new billing regime. I
am aware that there may well be errors or unclear invoices.  Please do
not hesitate to call and I will endeavour to resolve all issues as quick
as possible and it should all be plain sailing from now on.

***************

Training update
- -----------------

Web Design
HTML
For those of you who like to keep your weekends free, the March Web design
training course is on Thursday and Friday, the 29th and 30th, from 10.30
till 17.30 over both days.  
Weekend trainings are  : April the 28th, 29th and May 26th, 27th, 
from 11.00 till 18.00.

***New***
Dreamweaver training will begin from April onwards. Please get in touch
with Joanne for further details.

Using Pretty Good Privacy (PGP)
A new course developed  in response to your concerns about privacy on the
Internet and in on-line communications. You will learn how to send and
receive encrypted documents and emails. Trainings are the second Tuesday
of every month, 
from 18.30 - 21.00. Next 
training is the 13th March.

Email and Internet 
Suited to beginners and other users who would like to become more
proficient in using the Internet and email, this course runs on the first
Tuesday of every month. 
The next training is the 17th March at 18.30.

***New***
In the very near future we intend to modularise the e-mail and Internet
course and offer them as separate courses. This will give you  the choice
to take  'Using the Internet' and  'Using e-mail' separately, or together
as part of an Internet foundation course. Preliminary course outlines are
available for this  course from Joanne, email: coord at gn.apc.org 

Details for other courses, course outlines, costs and how to book can be
found at: 
http://www.gn.apc.org/
training. 

***************

Exemplary Support
- ---------------------

"I have cause to have countless dealings with people in the service sector
and the service that I have been given by Miss Liz Probert has been
exemplary. Her cheery professionalism reflects extremely well on
(GreenNet) and the service that it is endeavouriing to provide"

- - Mark Jones from Feed the Minds  to GreenNet support. 

Its good to know we are appreciated!

***************

Babies
- -------

Liz Probert, our Web Administrator and user support, is going on maternity
leave from April 15th for 6 months. Her work will be covered by Phil,
Janet and Chris.  Best of luck Liz! 

Congratulations and all our love to Anna Feldman, GreenNet web editor for
the birth of a baby girl, Maya, at 5.15 am on 5th March.  Anna is on
maternity leave until July.

***************

New Faces
- ------------
Welcome to Linh our volunteer Finance worker. Linh has been with us since
January. Thanks Linh for all of your hard work! 

Janet Chapman, our star support volunteer, will be taking up a part time
paid position with GreenNet as user support worker from April for six
months.

***************

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