WikiGovernance/News

May 2008
The focus area for the Commonwealth of Learning is working through partners to train civil society and government in transparent, inclusive, gender sensitive, evidence-based and accountable decision-making processes:


 * 1) 	Government at the sub-national level(except in cases of very small states, where we may also engage in national level) for both officials and elected representatives;


 * 1) 	Civil society, where some of our initiatives include election issues, learning how to do strategic planning or how to read and prepare a budget, as part of engagement with the School Management Committee/Board. Because we work mainly in Least Developed Countries and Most Fragile States, we must develop ODL materials for people with few literacy skills, as they make up a significant percent of the population of many countries.

Here are the areas in which we are already active:

Pacific -


 * Vanuatu - Wan Smolbag – producing a video to be also aired on TV dispelling witchcraft and promoting other approaches to conflict resolution.
 * Solomon Islands - Ministry of Education and Human Resource Development – developing and ODL policy and providing open distance learning training for school board staff.
 * Papua New Guinea - UPNG - providing training to the 40,000 civil servants in partnership with other training institutions as well as with all levels of government – part of the Public Sector Reform initiative.

South Asia


 * Bangladesh - Action Aid – building capacity in ODL and developing materials for People’s Plan of Action (civil society). Also Rupantar – developing ODL for strengthening local level government elected representatives


 * India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Pakistan – developing a Model for Women’s Empowerment at the Local Level using ODL – just beginning

Africa


 * Malawi – Cambridge University, University of Malawi and many other partners (north and south) – developing good governance materials for all levels of government, for civil society and for international development organizations
 * Ghana, Lesotho, Malawi, Zambia – as possible countries – need to be confirmed by ComSec – working with training institutions on rightstreaming (a new approach to include gender mainstreaming) for government.

April 2008

 * The Commonwealth of Learning's Leadership, Governance and Empowerment (COLLaGE) discussions begin on: http://groups.google.com/group/collage-community

January 2008

 * Planning begins for WikiGovernance wiki skills training workshop, to be held January or February 2008.
 * WikiEducator Learning4Content workshops begin, with aims to train 2 500 educators in 53 Commonwealth countries. (To register, please click here.)

December 2007

 * Draft proposal for PCF 5 accepted. Invitation to develop full paper on COLLaGE Community for PCF-5.

November 2007

 * COL is inviting suggestions for possible speakers and topics for its COLLaGE Community blog - focusing on Leadership, Governance and Empowerment.
 * Randy Fisher submits Proposal to PCF5, Accelerating Community/NGO Engagement for ODL Resource Development (Governance).