By FN for APCNews GOA, India,
Published onPage last updated on
Skills for the people. That’s the motto of APC’s newest member, the Tokyo-based Japan Computer Access For Empowerment (JCAFE).
JCAFE’s agenda is to "fill the gap" between the potential offered by the net, and the blocks to accessing it – specially by non governmental organisation (NGOs) who lack the technology and skills to take advantage of this exciting new medium.
"We have 100 members, and support 400 NGOs in Japan. Our office is located in the central area of Tokyo and several people visit us a day," said Hamada ‘Taratta’ Tadahisa.
JCAFE believes it will gain from being an APC member because "our principles are much in common". After all, JCAFE itself was started to set up an APC node in Japan in 1993. As Taratta puts it, "As APC members, our purpose would be further reinforced – that of supporting NGO activities."
ViVa… for volunteers
One of JCAFE’s achievements is their community site ‘ViVa!’. It came about in the aftermath of the January 2, 1997 oil-effusion accident at Nakhodka, in the sea off Japan. [http://www.viva.ne.jp/]
After that accident, many Japanese volunteers went to the area, and were stumped to find many webpages on the issue carrying incorrect or outdated information.
Many NGOs asked JCAFE to start a portal website for volunteers to better coordinate their actions. In response to this, ‘ViVa!’, (Vital Information for Voluntary Action) was born. It provides NGOs with a platform for diverse kinds of information. Activity reports, volunteer recruitments, staff openings and more.
Currently, ‘ViVa!’ is one of the biggest portal sites for volunteering and civil activities in its part of the globe. But JCAFE is considering how to shape up and build on the synergies of change for both the ‘ViVa!’ and the JCAFE website.
"In the JCAFE website, we are planning to provide information about ICTs," says Taratta. "So, we are considering in what way the ViVa! and main JCAFE website could relate to each other."
Interestingly, after JCAFE started ViVa!, some big companies and organisations also started their own volunteer portal site.
Capacity building for NGOs
JCAFE’s priority is "capacity building for NGOs", says JCAFE chair Tadahisa ‘Taratta’ Hamada. "We have seminars about the technical and social aspects of ICT. On themes like web accessibility, the digital divide and web-designing using CMSs (content-management solutions, that allow for building easy-to-create, content-rich sites)."
They also work on database construction, using PostgreSQL or MySQL – the proprietary and free software tools needed for this purpose. "We have what we call technical seminars and social seminars. I don’t know if these terms translate well into English," says ‘Taratta’.
In the technical seminars, they teach NGO staff and individuals about using computers. From the basic to the advanced levels. Social seminars, on the other hand, focus on lectures and workshops – about media literacy, the digital divide, intellectual property rights (IPR), privacy and the like.
Specialists and researchers are invited to talk on the theme. After that, there’s space for discussions. "It’s like a ‘cafe scientifique’," Taratta told APCNews through an online, chat-based interview conducted when it was past midnight in Goa and morning in the ‘land of the rising sun’.
"If you ask whether JCAFE’s seminars are unique or not, I would say that they are very unique," says ‘Taratta’. Participants, he explains, say they find it very useful to follow up their lectures with discussions, sometimes over dinner.
Lecturers are often from the universities, but "not all of them pure academics". Says Taratta: "I am a part-time lecturer in some universities. But I think of myself as an NGO activist."
More important than research
Tadahisa Hamada (46), known to friends as ‘Taratta’, worked as a researcher at the Japanese company NEC. He got started on his route to civic involvement with an organisation meant to network the non-profit community in his part of the globe. Three years back, he quit his job to devote time to the field in which he felt he could make a more important contribution, via JCAFE.
Hamada is currently chair of the not-for-profit organisation JCAFE.
"We founded JCA-NET from JCAFE, the mother organisation. JCAFE started in 1993, and JCA-NET started in 1997. JCA-NET is an internet provider for [non governmental organisations] NGOs, while JCAFE is a technical support group for NGOs," he told APCNews in an earlier interview.
Of JCAFE, he says: "We mainly support NGOs in Japan. But some individuals, academia, government offices, and social action divisions of companies (als) ask us for support. We help them except when we have no capacity."
History
Following the Gulf War in 1991, citizen groups in Japan felt the need to have a network connected to the Association for Progressive Communications (APC).
"This desire for a united network culminated in the founding of Japan Computer Access (JCA) in 1993. JCA carried out activities to establish the right of citizens to information, and supported citizen groups hoping to use the Internet. This is how we started our activities," explains the organisation. In April 1997, they set up JCA-NET, an ISP for NGOs, jointly with many NGOs and citizen groups.
One of it events the JCAFE is proud of is the October 2003 series of symposia in Tokyo, Sendai, Hiroshima, and Kobe, entitled ‘Civil Society and the Internet, Twenty Years of Networking and Future Prospects’.
Hamada aka Taratta explains that this new APC member provides information about ICT (information and communication technology) and issues in their website. It also provides a platform for information dissemination to NGOs. Besides, it holds seminars about ICT — both on technical matters and and relevant social issues.
JCAFE’s belief is: "The Internet is an effective tool for the exchange and sharing of information. It provides a vehicle that enhances the power of individual citizens. It empowers people to make a difference in society."
But it is concerned about the flip side of the debate: undeniably, a digital divide exists. Those who lack the technology and skills to take advantage of this revolutionary new medium will be left out and left behind, as its website argues.
Links
See earlier APC interview with Tadahisa Hamada https://www.apc.org/en/news/all/world/taking-cyber-skills-those-who-need-it
JCAFE site in English http://www.jcafe.net/english/
APC member BytesForAll’s Partha Sarkar’s blog with Taratta http://bytesforallparthadhaka.blogspot.com/2005/09/meeting-hamada
