Becky Hurwitz

Curious about who is working to build capacity in IT. Found some organizations/projects in the country and hope to speak with people involved.

Bar Camp, Oct 3-4, 2009

(http://barcampphnompenh.org) was held at Pannasasstra University (PUC); there are 1100+ people registered on the site as attending; sponsored by local and international companies.

Conical Hat Software

(http://www.conicalhat.com) Based in Phnom Penh, produces software in Khmer Unicode.

Digital Divide Data
(http://www.digitaldividedata.org/) NYC based, operates internationally. Socially responsible, digitization, data entry and conversion, digital publishing content to XML, building digital libraries.

Grameen: Village Phone
(http://www.villagephonedirect.org/contents/) same program as in Uganda; Grameen offers Village Phone as a microfranchise — they help people purchase a phone and run a business of selling airtime/phone use to other people.

InSTEDD: Mekong Collaboration Program
(http://instedd.org/mcp) I’ve mentioned InSTEDD before — they do disease and disaster reporting work; develop software, systems, teams, for doing this internationally.

InSTEDD: iLab

iReach

Informatics for Rural Empowerment and Community Health (http://www.ireach.org.kh/).

NiDA
National Information Communication Technology Development Authority (http://www.nida.gov.kh/index.php?language=en). Est. 2000 to:

• develop and implement IT policy
• monitor and audit all IT projects in the nation
• has 6 different concentrations: 1. policy and strategy coordination, 2. infrastructure, 3. human capacity, 4. policy environment, 5. content and application, 6. enterprise development

The English version of the website has a call for input with a due date of 2004. I’m not sure if this is true of the Khmer version of the site also.

Open Institute

(http://www.open.org.kh/en) Involved in various ICTD projects in Cambodia including

• Khmer Software Initiative, http://www.khmeros.info
• Open Schools Program, http://osp.open.org.kh
• Women’s Empowerment for Social Change, http://women.open.org.kh
• Open Learning (E-Learning) Program, http://elearning.open.org.kh
• Lexicography
• The River of Knowledge
• Mirror Publication, http://cambodiamirror.wordpress.com

Robib “is one village but also every village in the world”

(http://www.camnet.com.kh/cambodiaschools/villageleap/intro.htm) Robib is a group of 6 villages in the north-central Cambodia. And is the pilot for a project to build 200 schools in rural Cambodia. Apple-Japan, the MIT Media Lab, and Deutsche Bank have donated computers for these schools. Private donors pledge about $14,000 to build a school. The website for Robib indicates that this project is meant to help in many sectors — not just education. Computer and internet access is meant to provide market linkages between local artisans and foreign patrons, also, the telemedicine services are provided using the computers/internet. sounds a bit like the Millennium Village projects. The last thing written on this site seems to be from 2005. I’m curious about the status of the village now.

Samasource
(http://www.samasource.org/) Mentioned in blog postings before — Samasource is based in the Bay; they do great work in socially responsible outsourcing/tech capacity building. K and Southgate did some scouting for them while they were in Uganda, and Eric is now working for them in SF. They’ve done work in Cambodia.

Yejj
(http://www.yejj.com/) Phnom Penh based. Web production.