Foundation Projects
Support for CNXAPAC 2021
Digital Empowerment Foundation
This funding was to support the Digital Empowerment Foundation in running the Community Network Exchange Asia Pacific (CNXAPAC) event 2021.
The 2021 Community Network Xchange (CNX) occurred online on 15,17, and 21 November, focusing on the theme - community network for social good.
Community networks refer to the use of networking technologies by and for local communities, providing a sustainable solution to address the connectivity gaps that exist in underserved urban, remote, and rural areas around the world. The event was attended by several experts from different nations to come up with strategies to strengthen the Community Networks to build Internet infrastructure, disseminate factual information, fight misinformation, enable better access to health and education and provide critical support in the time of the pandemic. The second day of the event specifically focused on the synergies between
community radio and community networks to explore the scopes of collaboration to provide content and enhanced information to the communities. These interactive sessions discussed successful cases from the Barefoot College of Tilonia where the community network and community radio work in tandem, the Developing Rural Ecosystem Against Misinformation (DREAM) project of Association for Progressive Communications (APC) and Digital Empowerment Foundation (DEF) where community radio and chatbots were used to tackle the spread of misinformation, and the wireless Meo community of Nuh district in Haryana who run their own community radio.
The community radio practitioners and the experts on community media stressed the importance of building up more community radios and demanded the use of funds such as the Universal Service Obligation Funds for this purpose. Short videos of successful models were screened on all three days to demonstrate the potential of community networks in serving rural and remote areas. The conference was jointly hosted by DEF and Internet Society (ISOC) in partnership with Asia Pacific Network Information Centre (APNIC) Foundation, APC, Alliance for Affordable Internet (A4AI), Asia-Pacific Institute for Broadcasting Development (AIBD), and Action for Hope and Landscapes of Hope.
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