[CUWiN Press Release] IDRC Funds Project To Teach Wireless Builders, Programmers In Africa

[Chase Phillips]

IDRC FUNDS PROJECT TO TEACH WIRELESS BUILDERS, PROGRAMMERS IN AFRICA

Plans To Educate Wi-Fi Implementers Via Organized Workshops, Documentation

Urbana, IL, July 3, 2004 - Following attendance at a European wireless
conference, the Champaign-Urbana Community Wireless Network (CUWiN) worked
closely with the Association for Progressive Communications, Ecole
Supérieure Multinationale des Télécommunications, and wire.less.dk, a
Dutch wireless consulting company, to draft a proposal designed to educate
wireless implementers in Africa.  The International Development Research
Centre (IDRC) has funded the proposal for $225,000 US over the period from
July 2004 to June 2006.

CUWiN's involvement in this program is key to sharing our cutting edge
technology and experience with trainers and technologists in developing
African countries.  A positive benefit of making this technical
information available online to this target audience is that it will then
be available to wireless implementers globally.

The program will be used to teach trainers in Africa how to build out
wireless infrastructure and programmers adding features to existing
software and those creating new software.  The diverse population of
Africa faces unique hurdles which this program will overcome through a
variety of techniques:

  -- Training: hands-on workshops in North, South, and West Africa;

  -- Materials development: documentation collected and translated to
     English, French, and Arabic; and

  -- Distributed knowledge base: development and maintenance of the CUWiN
     SourceForge development site to collect technical information of
     interest to wireless implementers and programmers

Through projects such as this, the groundwork is being laid to establish
lasting communities of wireless networking practitioners in Africa -- and
across the world -- with a vision of holding future in-depth training
sessions in greater numbers once this path-finding and the program itself
are concluded.

About CUWiN

The Champaign-Urbana Community Wireless Network (CUWiN) has built a
communications network using wireless networking equipment.  This is
essentially the same "WiFi" equipment used in homes and offices, but CUWiN
puts it on rooftops to connect neighbors and form a high-speed community
network.

CUWiN's three-part mission is to:

  -- connect more people to Internet and broadband services;

  -- develop open-source hardware and software for use by wireless
     projects world-wide; and

  -- build and support community-owned, not-for-profit broadband
     networks in cities and towns around the globe.

CUWiN is a program of the Urbana-Champaign Independent Media Center.  OJC
Technologies is CUWiN's development home.

For additional information, contact:

Sascha Meinrath
Project Coordinator
Champaign-Urbana Community Wireless Network
(217)278-3933
sascha at cuwireless.net
http://www.cuwireless.net/