Message to Pamela and Dadamac community

Thank you for your  patrotism to invite us again  

 to the meeting place for Dadamac's "First Thusday" meeting. 

POVERTY IN AFRICA AND INCREASING OF POPULATION

Dear members as we are keeping on moving in  

threshold of the 21st Century , a  Century  that is  characterizing  by  competition. It is clear, therefore, that  this Century be a Century dominated by those with advanced technological capacity, high productivity, modern and efficient transport and communication infrastructure and, above all highly skilled manpower imbued with initiative. If we are to be active participants in global developments of the twenty –first we must, as a Individual, find the ways of improving and strethening ourselves in these areas"Povert and Population increasing"

Today's generation of young people is the largest in history. Over 3 billion people - nearly half of the world's population - are under the age of 25.  It is crucial that we engage the young decision makers of tomorrow in the development decisions of today.  I hope that,  the Teacher talking  Program in Kenya will keep on rolling so that to imancipate young generation from mental slavish awareness and creativity.

925 million people do not have enough to eat - more than the populations of USA, Canada and the European Union; 

(Source: FAO news release,  

The weekly online UK-Nigeria meetings have been established in their present format for more than three years. However, following Nigeria’s terrible post-election violence, John this week identified a new and unexpected benefit of our regular sessions - explaining that the Dadamac meetings are “evolving into a balm, a tonic, a forum where Fantsuam Foundation can unburden ... a psycho-social element of our weekly meeting”.

The rural community has been badly shaken by the attacks and, although the news reporters appear to have moved on, the real story is still unfolding. For example, how people from both sides of the religious divide are rebuilding trust and their fragile economy with minimal Government support - save from the presence of soldiers and the curfew which we suspect helped to reduce the number of casualties.

Shortly after the burning down of the vital Kafanchan market in April and during these weekly meetings, the idea of first a peace market and more recently the women peace traders has taken shape. It is therefore very pleasing to report this week that six women have now been given their N30,000  (part grant, part loan) to restart their businesses and that the new market, located on the road to Kagoro was opened on June 6th.

This is our plan for Today's First Thursday.

Informal chat before and after the main session.
We can chat informally before and after our main session, but in the main session we will focus on some set topics. If people arrive during the main session then Nikki will greet them on behalf of all of us.

Set topics for discussion.

The set topics reflect the interests of people who said in advance that they hope to attend. These topics are:

Hi Vijay

Welcome back. Thanks for your helpful feedback on your First Thursday experience. You raise many good points and I would like to address them all very seriously. I suggest that we take our time to explore them all in more detail, so in this post I will give an overall response and suggest some structure for our discussions.

It seems we are in overall agreement:

• First Thursday has great potential
• There are still serious glitches to be overcome
• We need to clarify the aims
• We need to tackle the glitches
• Our emphasis should be about caring to find out what people really want and then finding solutions
• First Thurdays should listen to problems and play a role in providing advice, help, leads, contacts and seek/arrange funds

Approach to our discussions

i hope you recognise your words and ideas in the list above, and in what I will write below. I am trying to include all that you mentioned, but within a strucutre that will help to guide our future discussions. I have a mental checklist that i use when I look at ICT4D dsicussions, and I will try it out now to see how it fits your post. I call it the "three legged stool" model of ICT for Education/Development. I won't explain it now I'll just use it. It leads me to the following structure in response to your post.

The First Thursday chat on March 4th at 12.00 GMT/UTC will focus on two of our permaculture interests - kitchen gardens and jatropha. The plan is that Marcus Simmons will join the chat as our permaculture adviser. One or more people from the Dadamac team in Nigeria will also chat. They will discuss what has been happening since Marcus's visit a few months ago. It is still very early days, so the discussion will be about first practical steps that have been taken (or are being planned) by the permaculture early adopters, and what else they need to know.

Down to earth

It will be very down to earth. How are the jatropha seedlings getting on? They are being carefully tended during the intense heat of the end of the dry season, waiting for the rains to come to give good conditions for planting out - but are they surviving okay? What of the kitchen garden ideas? What is the feedback on the keyhole gardening? Has anyone done any follow up on setting up a personal kitchen garden? What problems are people facing? What information is it useful to exchange?

Today's First Thursday meeting was a mixture of networking and discussing permaculture. It brought together people from Minciu Sodas, from the Video Bridge workshop and from the Dadamac Community in the UK and Nigeria.

Topics mentioned included the possibility of practicing permaculture on a very small scale, the impact of permaculture, and if it was difficult to practice.

Hi Vijay

I am glad that you chose the article on "Pushing up Farm Productivity" to share with us. It looks as if several group interests are overlapping around the topic of food production, and eco-friendly solutions.

I am very aware of approaches to food production and methods of growing things at present because Marcus Simmons is still sharing details of his recent trip to Africa. He was in Benin and Nigeria - and the main focus of his trip was permaculture. He went to Benin to learn more about permaculture as applied in West Africa, then went to share those ideas at Fantsuam and Attachab Eco-Villlage.

I particularly like the bit in the article "Pushing up Farm Productivity" that said "It is not the farmer who makes the food: he is only a facilitator. Food is actually made by plants. Therefore it is important to understand the requirements of plants and supply them without restrictions in order for plants to deliver food. Since plants do not talk, their needs are understood through research and experimentation."

There is a difference in emphasis between the approach in the article and a permaculture approach, as the article seems to refer to artificial fertilisers, and permaculture favours natural fertilisers and composting - but there is a shared concern to be more aware of the needs of the plants.

Folabi (Fola) Sunday teaches in a primary school in rural Nigeria -  a motor-cycle ride away from Ago-Are, in Oyo State. He is a Dadamac Self Directed Learner, who keeps in contact with the "connected community" through his phone, and joins in First Thursday chats whenever he can. Fola is currently learning more about ICT and solar energy from Ricardo and Graham (in the UK) and others in Minciu Sodas and Dadamac, through chats and emails.

Thanks to Andrius Kulikauskas and Minciu Sodas, Pamela McLean is usually “at home” (on the Internet) once a month, logged in for an hour, and wondering if any of her contacts will arrive for a catch-up chat (or to discuss some topic that has been agreed before-hand). The chats are held in the Minciu Sodas Worknets chatroom.This means that anyone with an Internet connection can join in – no need to log-in with some special ID, and no need to download any extra software as might be needed for Yahoo or Skype.

Meeting times

Meetings are held on the first Thursday of the month starting 13:00 Nigerian time, 15:00 Kenyan time, 13:00 British Summer time, 12:00 GMT.  The meeting is nominally for an hour, but sometimes goes on much longer. It all depends who turns up. Unfortunately the timing is rather early for American contacts, but some of our contacts in East Africa come online from cyber cafes, and it is best if they can go home before dark.

A reminder usually goes out via the LearningFromEachOther yahoo group, which is a Minciu Sodas group that Pam leads. Sometimes people send an email beforehand to say they will be dropping in, and mentioning a special interest.