APC's first-ever call for nominations for the Betinho Communications Prize elicited an overwhelming response: 165 nominations and applications from all over the world!

Our international Jury was charged with the challenging task of choosing a winner from these 12 finalists.  The winning initiative was announced at the APC Forum Day in Visegrad, Hungary, on May 2, 2000.

The twelve finalists for 2000 were:

• M.S. Swaminathan Research Foundation - Knowledge Centres for Sustainable Food Security.

  • Knowledge System for Sustainable Food Security
    A network of four village telecentres or information shops attached to a central information hub, in rural Southern India provides an indispensable information resource to rural families.
    
    Families in the villages are able to use the information shops to send email, and request research and information through the central information hub, via a wireless network. Particularly popular are requests for women's health information, advice on growing local crops and protecting them from diseases, the daily market prices for these crops, local weather forecasts, and clear information about the bewildering array of programs that are provided by the Indian government to aid poor families.

  • The information network also provides training for village youth and women to maintain a system that generates local value added information. More...
    

• Balkan Sunflowers: Volunteers for Social Reconstruction in the Balkans.

  • Using ICTs to Mobilise Volunteers for Social Reconstruction in the Balkans
    

    Balkan Sunflowers (BSF) is a non-profit, international grassroots organization that was founded in the spring of 1999, originally to aid the Kosovar refugees. It brings together volunteers from all over the world that want to help in ways that monetary donations and emergency humanitarian aid cannot. Person-to-person interaction with voluntary workers, who come to work as partners and neighbours, helps to restore a sense of community life and soothe the experiences of those who have been uprooted.
    
    Using an entirely Internet-based volunteer recruitment system built on simple mailing list and WWW tools, BSF has mobilized thousand of volunteers to participate in rebuilding Balkan communities from the ground up. More...
    
    

• Centro de Derechos Humanos Miguel Agustín Pro Juárez
  (Miguel Agustín Pro Juárez Centre for Human Rights (PRODH)
  

  • Human rights in Mexico monitored internationally
    The Miguel Agustin Pro Juarez Centre for Human Rights began in 1988 in Mexico and has become a communication solidarity network for human rights issues. The centre analyses, investigates and publishes information on the human rights situation in Mexico, via email and their web site. The centre provides legal advice, defence support, and training for human rights groups. Through PRODH’s activities, human rights issues in Mexico are promoted internationally.

    “Those who have been unjustly imprisoned are able to feel the solidarity of the international community; those who have been tortured can find hope; and those who are fighting for justice feel renewed energy to continue.” More...

• Agencia Informativa Pulsar (Pulsar Information Agency).

  • Free, daily news service for community radio in Latin America
    There are thousands of community radio stations in the Latin-American and Caribbean region that use radio to democratise communications. The vast majority of these radio stations do not have the financial resources to subscribe to news wires and generally these wires do not provide a civil society perspective nor have community interests in mind. The Pulsar Information Agency fulfills these needs by providing a free, daily news service to 2000 subscribers clearly focused on information from and for Latin America and the Caribbean.

    Short news stories, ready for radio broadcast, are sent out daily via an email list to community radio stations. The news is read on the air as well as used as source material for preparing special editions and is used by small, alternative and labour printed press. This provides an alternative perspective on the life and work of the communities in the region. More...

• Watchperson Project, Inc.

  • Mapping toxic hotspots online to raise community awareness
    The Watchperson Project was the first community-driven initiative in New York City to establish a database of environmental and health information to assist the community in improving its planning and environmental protection.  The Project has developed innovative ways to document and distribute environmental information in a way that communities can understand, by mapping information block by block, canvassing the community door to door, and when necessary, bringing actions to court to redress unjust environmental burdens.

    The project runs a database, website and Geographic Information System (GIS), which provides the community with the necessary tools to develop effective responses to the wide range of environmental problems facing them. More...

• Red de Intercomunicación Quiechua (Quiechua Intercommunication Network).
  • Preserving and Promoting Indigenous Communications in Latin America
    There are between 10 and 12 million people who speak quichua/quechua in Latin America from the south of Colombia to Santiago del Estero in Argentina. Most of this population lives in Bolivia, Perú and Ecuador. These indigenous people are the most marginal and impoverished social sector in Latin America. Their traditions, medicine, music, religious sense and cosmogony have always been under pressure, and are dying slowly.
    
    Using digital audio production techniques, e-mail communications and satellite distribution, the "Red quiechua", a network of popular radio stations, has been committed to preserving the quichua/quechua indigenous language of Bolivia, Ecuador and Peru.
    
    For the first time quichuas and quechuas from Bolivia, Peru and Ecuador can communicate, by participating in radio broadcasts - in their own language - through each of the network's radio stations. They are heard through satellite all over the Andean countries. By making it possible to recover their own language, they can assert their identity. More...
    
    
• Max Foundation's Internet Global Help Program
  • One of the most important resources needed for the treatment of leukemia is the availability of matching bone marrow tissue for transplant. The Max Foundation's Internet Global Help Program helps in the search for matching bone marrow tissue within worldwide registries. This program also provides emotional support and guidance in Spanish, unifies specialists and supporters within the Latin American region, and facilitates communication between physicians and patients from different areas. Most importantly, this program empowers the families of children with leukemia by making resources and options accessible to them. More...
    
    
• RCI: Red de Información y Comunicación para Organizaciones Indígenas de México por Internet
  • RCI: Information and Communication Network for Indigenous Organizations in Mexico
    Indigenous organizations in Mexico have united in order to fight for their rights, strengthen their culture and increase the production and sale of their products, so that they can improve their quality of life.

    RCI (Red de Información y Comunicación para Organizaciones Indígenas de México por Internet/Information and Communication Network for Indigenous Organisations) has helped indigenous organizations connect to the Internet in order to share information, access information, and to publish their own information globally. People interested in indigenous communities in Mexico have access through the Web, to information provided by indigenous people themselves. They can also make direct contact with groups (using online directories), can access indigenous literature and an indigenous peoples' ethnography. More...

• Wona Sanana: A Community-based Child Rights Data-gathering Methodology and Response Project in Mozambique (No Website).
  • Seeing Mozambique’s Children in Data
    "Wona" literally means, "seeing, watching, protecting", and "Sanana", means "children" in Bitonga, a dialect spoken in the Inhambane province of Mozambique.
    
    Wona Sanana is a methodology that teaches communities how to collect information about the problems facing their children and empowers them to design their own solutions. The project has used a combination of ICTs (databases, e-mail, fax) and ‘people’-based work (community meetings, face-to-face surveying) to collect data on over 15,000 children in eight villages.
    
    The communities' greater understanding of the causes of their children's problems has increased their potential for developing better preventive measures, strengthened the commitment of parents to developing solutions, and mobilized communities to lobby local NGOs and elected officials for access to resources to solve their problems. More...
    
    
• Fundación GAMMA IDEAR
  
  • GAMMA IDEAR FOUNDATION: “Living together peacefully in Colombia leads to development"
    The widespread violence in Colombia and its negative impact on the development of communities has led the Gamma Idear Foundation to develop the “Mossavi” framework as a means to deal with these issues.
    
    Mossavi’s main areas of work are the prevention of violence and family abuse, conflict resolution, institutional and sex education projects. The foundation researches a community’s knowledge, attitude trends and how children are punished in the family. The Mossavi model is then adapted to fit local needs with regard to risk and protection factors and action is implemented in the community to ensure change in a self-managed way. ICTs are used for ongoing research as well as for disseminating results of Mossavi implementation. More...
    
    
• People's Recovery, Empowerment and Development Assistance (PREDA) Foundation Inc.

  • Using the Internet to campaign for human rights
    The Preda Foundation’s response to human rights abuses in the Philippines, originally provided sanctuary, safety, recovery and rehabilitation to victims and communicated the social problems of exploitation to the world. Today Preda is one of the most active international campaign organizations in the Philippines, using all forms of ICTs to fight for the protection of abused women and children. It is active in opposing vigilantism, the summary execution of youths and works to have the government uphold the rule of law and to respect and implement the rights of women and children.

    Despite opposition from forces linked with international trafficking of women and children syndicates, Preda has pioneered the use of the Internet in international campaigning for women's and children's rights. More...

• Le projet Systeme d'Information Urbain Populaire (SIUP) du Programme Ecocommunautaire de Yoff (EcoYoff) de l'ONG Centre de Ressources pour l'Emergence Sociale Participative (Popular Urban Information System -EcoYoff).

  • Preserving and Enhancing Oral Traditions in the Emerging Senegalese Information Society
    The Lebou community of traditional fishers in Senegal has really preserved its cultural identity, throughout history, with a spirit of independence and a real togetherness of community life.

    Until 1997, the history of the Yoff community was oral. Now SIUP, the Popular Urban Information System, in conjunction with all members of the community, has built a web site containing databases of Yoff community information, allowing the Lebou to publish information about their culture and traditions. This information makes it possible to weave a link between community decision-makers and citizens; and in addition, better educates the population about their community, for the emergence of a new citizenship.

    With this new innovation, a Community Information Centre and web site, the young people of the traditional village of Yoff learned and wrote for the first time the history of their village and their community, and made it available to the world. More...