Local Social Learning: A Resource Database and Delivery Network for Arab Digital Literacy
- Adult education
- Communications
- Citizen participation
- Journalism
- Information & communication technology
- Media
- Transparency
Example: Walk us through a specific example(s) of how this solution makes a difference; include its primary activities.
Marketplace: Who else is addressing the problem outlined here? How does the proposed project differ from these approaches?
Jessica Dheere &
Mohamad Najem
SMEXbeirut
1‐5 years
The information you provide here will be used to fill in any parts of your profile that have been left blank, such as interests, organization information, and website. No contact information will be made public. Please uncheck here if you do not want this to happen..
Growth (your pilot is up and running, and starting to expand)
Operating for 1‐5 years
Google tells us that Arabic content comprises less than 1 percent of Web content. This means we have to create a lot of our own content, especially since Western social media content often addresses issues that, frankly, we don't face, like online fundraising.
So for three years, we've been trying to get a handle on our own original and Arabic materials production. Lots of research, assimilation, writing, and translation, that is if the Arabic terms exist. The content creation process moves so much more slowly than social media changes. But we keep trying and they keep getting downloaded, like during our Ramadan blog series. This year we hired our first dedicated translator, so we were able to produce an Arabic version of our MADskills TOT course almost exactly in parallel with the English. We're very proud, but the pace was affecting our ability to do anything else.
At the same time, we promised to make all our materials available to our trainers but I didn't think about how to do that, until we created a new contact database with Bento, and I realized we could use the software to create a materials database, too. So, we thought, why not create it once, for everyone?
In three years, we've given more than a 100 trainings in seven countries to more than 1,000 individuals, in offline and online environments. And many of them have given trainings too. We've also translated and distributed several guides, from Digiactive, Tactical Technology Collective, and Movements.org, all of which have distributions in the thousands.
Still, it can be difficult to quantify our impact, because individual lives don't move at the pace of project evaluations. We keep in touch with many of our alumni, and we see our presence as local campaigns become more digital. Our efforts return to us tenfold in the opportunities we're presented with, such as hosting Arab Techies women's gathering in 2010.
But it's the individual stories that we remember. Like a well-known young activist from Iraq, who had his first blogging experience with us in 2008. Or the journalist who wrote for a women's mag while developing his social media presence during our TOT and then was hired by Al Jazeera to work in the new media department.
In our current MADskills training, we admitted 40 instead of 20, thinking we'd have a 50% attrition rate. Halfway through, we're at 37.
With strong design and equitable partnerships, we believe that our project will grow very fast in terms of number of resources, users, and partners. Our hope is to become a significant source for Arabic content that spurs the creation of more Arabic content.
The model would be replicable, if localized, for other regions and in other languages, especially non-major languages. We believe that what will make it particularly appealing to other communities is that it build on existing resources and provides an incentive for enhancing in-region and in-country relationships. In short, we're not asking people to visit our database, we're bringing the database--or at least the interface to the database--to them.
Have a coherent database structure and beta version partnerships with materials producers & media outlets in development
Organize, categorize all existing training materials and guides
Research and establish formal relationships with materials-producing individuals and partner media outlets
Work with an engineer to specify the database solution and the various features and connections to it
Testing of the beta version of the database is under way with three media outlets
Identify and reach out to potential local media partners in various Arab countries, develop licensing agreement
Database development and testing
Develop and implement a marketing plan
1,001 - 10,000
More than 10,000
Hybrid model
The never-ending hurry-up and wait grants process and the difficult process of finding core funding keeps us off-balance in terms of hiring and growth and our development as a forward-looking organization. We think that moving to a social entrepreneurship model may help with that, but we're also aware that we need to capitalize our enterprise and develop a strong business plan, including several types of revenue streams, since we want to maintain our commitment to open-licensing and open-source culture. We we're working on the plan now.
In particular, we think that a lot of the active training we do will become active learning and be delivered more frequently in online and mobile environments. We embrace that change and view the database and other plans as already preparing ourselves to deliver innovative services in this sector. In addition, we think that a whole new group of information-savvy learners, users, and viewers will enter the Arab market, while others will mature, and the Arab knowledge culture will look much different and be even more empowered than it is today.
We will explore new distribution models and, by closely watching the translation field, we may end up with much more elegant solutions than we're proposing now. We will also be immersing ourselves in mobile learning and all the options and applications that promises for delivering just enough training, just in time, for just the right person.
We have both a registered NGO and a private company. We are exploring ways of structuring both into a hybrid organization, where a percentage of profits help support the NGO, which will continue to apply for grants. This is roughly how we've been operating, by applying for grants as well as providing services for a fee, depending on the type of agreement.
For the company in particular, we're exploring a variety of potential revenue streams based on developing new content and adapting existing content to a variety of digital formats, as well as continuing to provide custom-designed online and offline trainings.
We've partnered with, formally and informally, and provided services for local and international NGOs and groups, including:
Aikilab
American Islamic Congress
Arab Techies
ABA-Rule of Law Initiative
Catholic Relief Services
Creative Commons
Development of People and Nature Association
Digiactive
Internews
Iraqi Streets
IREX-Iraq
IREX-Lebanon
IWPR
Meedan
MobileActive
NaharAshabab
Nahwa Al Mouwatiniya
NDI-Lebanon
Tactical Technology Collective
TEDxBeirut
USAID-OTI Lebanon
USIP
Women in Technology, Lebanon
We currently operate with a staff of six full-time employees and three project consultants. Full-timers include myself and my husband Mohamad Najem, trainer and operations officer; two project managers; a full-time translator; and a project assistant. Consultants include training mentors and a web developer. We have addressed major issues this year with hiring, with regard to professionalism and bilingualism. But we lack a bona fide techie for web development and engineering, someone who can help design the solutions to the problems they're solving.
Investment, Human resources or talent, Pro-bono help (legal, financial, etc.), Mentorship.
Marketing or media, Research or information, Collaboration or networking, Innovation or ideas, Mentorship.
We also need help with reviewing contracts with clients and grantors as well as developing staff contracts. We would very much like to be connected to mentorship opportunities, as it's often difficult to find peers to talk through challenges with--everyone is so busy. As far as what we can provide, anything related to communications and strategy and the ideas that they can generate. We can also provide mentorship to a younger leader.
We build digital literacy for effective civic participation in Arab society.