Abel CAINE, OER Programme Specialist at UNESCO, in charge of coordinating the OER Community on the WSIS Platform, says in the online group for this community, “we had a discussion on how OER Initiatives should practice what they preach and use open software tools. For those of you who are interested in free and open source software AND would like to help in increasing the number of women who are developing or promoting FOSS, please join the new “Gender and FOSS Community” at: http://www.wsis-community.org/pg/groups/329964/gender-equality-in-free-and-open-source-software-foss/. The Community which is managed by the UNESCO FOSS Programme aims at creating a network of different institutions, networks and actors that deal with the Gender Gap in FOSS. Please contact my colleague, Mr. Davide Storti (d.storti@unesco.org) for more information.”

Also see this walk down memory lane: photos from the United Nations Volunteers (UNV) Telecenter at WSIS 2003 Geneva.

Tags: women, gender, woman, girls, ICT4D, UNESCO, WSIS, information, communication, communications, ICT, collaboration, community, engagement, OER, development, developing, FOSS, online, Internet, open, software, source, Africa, Asia, South America, Latin America