From the Field: IDP Camp or Internet Cafe?

by Jon Marino

category: Humanitarian Relief

Published March 22, 2009 @ 02:57PM PT

This is part of an occasional series with first-hand reports from those working in some of the more difficult corners of the world.

This post is by Jon Marino, writing from northern Uganda. To read Jon's previous posts, see here.

Jon is a Fulbright Scholar who conducts research on conflict and recovery, while also serving as country director of assetmap.org, a new initiative that helps communities use the internet to discover and connect the resources they have for their own development.

IDP Camp or Internet Cafe?

Take a walk through Coo Pe IDP Camp (Coo Pe literally means “no men” in Acholi/Luo) in northern Uganda and you are liable to stumble across something that may surprise you.

Thanks to Project BOSCO, residents of Coo Pe have access to the internet, either via a wireless network, or by using a solar-powered PC stationed in the camp.

Actually, Coo Pe is one of seven IDP (internally displaced persons) camps in northern Uganda that have wireless capacity, and if things progress as Project BOSCO people want it too, there will soon be 20 camps wired up.

Project BOSCO - which stands for Battery Operated System for Community Outreach - is the result of a collaborative effort between Catholic parishes in Indiana, USA and Gulu. The workings of the project are a bit complicated, but basically it goes like this…

BOSCO hosts a wireless router hub at a centrally located Catholic school just outside of Gulu Town. Select camps are then connected to that network. Additionally, each participating camp is given a “low power PC” that runs completely on solar power. A phone line and digital camera are included in the package. The BOSCO team then works with camp residents to identify members for a leadership committee that manages the computer station, trains residents on how to use the equipment, and spearheads creative initiatives.

Once the station is up-and-running, users can contribute to an open source wiki designed to facilitate communication between residents of various camps, and with folks around the world. BOSCO recruits volunteers from outside northern Uganda who commit to checking the wiki regularly and responding to new content posted by camp residents.

Father Joe Okumu of the Gulu archdiocese is a key visionary for the project. When I talked to him about BOSCO, he asserted, “To be human is to have openness with the world. One major impact of this war is that our people were stripped of this by being forced into the camps.”

Father Joe told me that the project was initially conceived as an emergency-response system that would give camp residents the power to share the oppression they were experiencing at the hands of the rebel Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) and the Ugandan government with the outside world. However, now that relative peace has returned to the region, the technology is helping people with the rebuilding process. Farmers are using the wiki to share ideas about re-introducing crops. Human rights monitors are using it to highlight corruption and abuse. Schools are using it to access online newspapers for free.

Father Joe went on to say, “I admit, this project looks a little crazy. People sometimes ask why we aren’t using the money to bring people food. But, this is the first food people need…to discover new people and ideas through communication. The language of the internet is actually very simple. If you just give people access to the technology and spend some time with them…creating email, typing your name, these are things that our people can learn. And, once they do, they can connect to anyone, anywhere…This project is taking northern Uganda, which has fallen 20 years behind, 20 years ahead, where people all over the world are just starting to reach.”

Kevin Bailey, a recent Notre Dame graduate currently volunteering for Project Bosco in Gulu, sees the project as a challenge to the vast humanitarian community working in the region. “The ingenuity of the people here is underestimated. If you make the technology available, people are very skilled in putting it to use…just think about how the cell phone has exploded here in the last few years…Project BOSCO is sort of trying to turn the development paradigm on its head and start by letting the people lead the way.”

To get in on the fun, go to http://bosco-uganda.wikispaces.com or www.bosco-uganda.org.

[Project BOSCO equipment at work in a northern Uganda IDP camp - Photo from bosco-uganda.wikispaces.com]