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21. April 2013 af Benjamin Balder Bach
denmark malawi mzuzu volunteers English

Preparing for the next project

During June-July and depending on shipping conditions, FAIR Denmark will kick off the next ICT centre project in partnership with Mzuzu University located in the Northern region of Malawi. The aim of the project is to equip 8-10 secondary schools with an ICT centre and to extend the experience gathered from the first pilot project.

Not least, the project will establish a main centre at …

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15. Marts 2013 af Benjamin Balder Bach
arbejdsdag Danish

I den kommende weekend, d. 15-17. marts 2013 skal FAIR fylde en 20' container med udstyr. Containeren sendes afsted til Malawi hvor vi laver ca. 8 IT-centre på secondary schools og 1 på et universitet.

I den forbindelse kunne vi virkelig godt bruge et par hænder. Vi sætter stor pris på alt fra hele dage til et par timer.

Tilmeld dig på Google Docs.

Mød op på Birkedommervej 31 …

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11. Januar 2013 af Benjamin Balder Bach
Danish

Et par gange om måneden, nærmere bestemt på søndage, har vi arbejdsdage, hvor vi løser både rutine-arbejde og nye projekter.

Det er en god måde at komme i berøring med en masse computere. Og mennesker. En smule med mennesker, men mest med computere :)

På værkstedet er der varme, musik og kaffe. De tidlige kommer allerede fra kl 10, og dagen slutter kl 18. Vi arbejder mest med det praktiske, …

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9. December 2012 af
evaluation malawi English

In October 2012, the first FAIR Denmark project in Malawi officially ended and a final evaluation trip took place. With a new and ambitious project in the making, we were eager to draw as many lessons as possible from the experiences of the last 18 months.

The overall impression was indeed positive: All five centers are being used and technical challenges have been overcome.

This being FAIR Denmark’s first project, …

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3. November 2012 af Benjamin Balder Bach
English

Perhaps the most time consuming part is ensuring that all data on disk drives are wiped. A typical single-pass overwrite takes 1-2 hours.

However, there are still many beliefs, even at professional IT levels, that data has to be overwritten several times to ensure that it cannot be recovered. Those are myths!

September 2012, the American government agency National Institute for Standards and Technology has drafted an update of their …

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27. Oktober 2012 af Benjamin Balder Bach
conference hk samdata English

Celebrating their 40 years anniversary, the Danish worker's union HK\Samdata has invited FAIR to be exclusively present at a conference of 100 delegated IT workers from all over Denmark. HK\Samdata is the biggest professional IT union in Denmark and work to promote both working conditions, professional networks, skill sharing and education.

We are very happy for the opportunity.

Furthermore, HK\Samdata has decided to encourage their members to support FAIR's projects, …

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10. Oktober 2012 af Benjamin Balder Bach
guatemala south america video English

FAIR Norway has set up 16 computer centres in Guatemala, and Antrofilm has visited them to make this 5 minute short about the schools and the staff maintaining the centres.

Watch the clip on youtube >

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26. September 2012 af Benjamin Balder Bach
kenya open-source English

Open source makes a lot of sense - also in economics. African countries such as Kenya with little or no software industry will lose out if they build their technological infrastructures on intellectual properties from foreign countries.

A South African blog on TechCentral reports:

The Kenyan government is ditching proprietary software in favour of free and open-source software alternatives in a move it hopes will save it money.

According …

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26. September 2012 af Benjamin Balder Bach
linux nice open-source ubuntu English

As part of the first model project, National Initiative For Civic Education (NICE) in Malawi conducted teacher workshops on Ubuntu Linux and OpenOffice at five computer centres together with Bennett Kankuzi, lecturer at University of Malawi (The Polytechnic).

It is FAIR's concept that all computer donations should come - not alone but - with the knowledge transfer required for actual development, ie. teacher and technician training. However this should also …

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24. September 2012 af Benjamin Balder Bach
English

FAIR and NICE (National Initiative for Civic Education, Malawi) are currently concluding the very first model project. Statistics have been collected from all centers showing promising figures: During one year, a rough estimate of 47 people have gained computer access per computer, and the 5 centers have reached out to roughly 11,000 people.

We know that there are many things to improve in coming project models, but the first project …

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