Seed Alliance Awards Ceremony at IGF 2017

20/12/2017

The Seed Alliance program, a collaborative partnership between regional Internet registries LACNIC, APNIC, and AFRINIC for their FRIDA, ISIF Asia, and FIRE initiatives, presented their awards to the projects selected as the winners of the 2017 edition. The awards ceremony was held at the Internet Governance Forum which took place at the United Nations headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland.

With the financial support of the International Development Research Centre (IDRC) of Canada and the Internet Society (ISOC), Seed Alliance honored six initiatives that have contributed to local and global Internet development in Latin America, Asia, and Africa.

During the ceremony, Laura Kaplan of LACNIC, Vymala Thuron of AFRINIC, and Duncan Macintosh of APNIC presented the awards to this year’s six winning projects (https://igf2017.sched.com/event/CSD9)

Duncan presented the 2017 ISIF Asia Award to the project titled ‘Democratizing Decision Support: PetaBencana.id Platform for Equitable Disaster Resilience’ of Indonesia.

Thuron presented an award to EduAir by EduAirBox of Cameroon, to the African Renewable Energy Distributor (ARED) initiative of Rwanda, and to the Maendeleo Foundation of Uganda for their proposal Mobile Solar Computer Classroom.

To conclude, Kaplan honored the winners of the two 2017 FRIDA Awards: the educational project titled Armonía by Cuba’s Universidad de Oriente and Brazilian organization Coding Rights.

Armonía by Cuba’s Universidad de Oriente is an educational initiative developed in more than 20 rural settlements which sought to address problems identified by the community by developing digital educational media, including multimedia, websites and e-books, working together with primary schools and other higher-level educational institutions.

In turn, Coding Rights, a group of Latin American women based in Brazil, was honored for their work in promoting a critical use of digital technologies, including an understanding of data collection and consent from a user’s perspective, specifically that of women and members of the LGBTTQI community.

Kaplan stressed the inclusion of the gender perspective in many of the Seed Alliance projects. “In recent years, the gender perspective is becoming increasingly relevant in our projects; we will continue to work for this to continue,” she remarked.

Seed Alliance (http://seedalliance.net) is a collaborative partnership between three regional awards and grants programs – FIRE Africa, FRIDA and ISIF ASIA – and their various sponsors. All members contribute financially and support the logistics of the program as well as the soft services which award winners and grant recipients are provided.

Together, these programs support innovative projects and research initiatives that promote Internet development in the Global South.