Professor Steven Jenkins gave me some hope.  (Or was it Professor Tom Lombardi?)  He told me that Barack Obama wrote Dreams from My Father and, at the time, only a few thousand copies were printed, and nothing much came of it.  Maybe my words will matter somehow, some day.

For now, I'm engaging one reader at a time.  Steven left Lehman Brothers days before it failed, just as David Ellison-Bey [of Episode 3] was struggling with foreclosure by Aurora Loan Services [of Episode 5].  I ask Steven for the inside story, who allows and directs such corporate wickedness?  He doesn't understand me, but agrees to read David's hardship letter.  Steven stops just as he starts - David's "discombobulation" simply turns him off.  Later, with utmost endurance, he slogs through, concludes that David lived beyond his means and refuses to believe that a cat urinated on David's mortgage bill.  I have found a photograph I made in the spring which supports David's version:

Steven is enjoying Les Miserables.  He's found several passages which fill him with awe.  Victor Hugo writes so convincingly of the dysfunctions which I make unreadable.  Steven says, we should have started David's hardship letter with the bullets that were firing as we wrote it.  I say, that's not the point, but rather that David is indeed discombobulated, an elderly man with no family to help him make sense of his bills and the predatory practices of even the most legitimate businesses.

What might I learn from Dickens? He draws memorable characters and then brings them together in the oddest combinations.  And what is David Copperfield about?  <Spoiler alert> The coming to manly wisdom of the most innocent of boys. </Spoiler alert>

You are the hero of the Includer.  God and I can bring you together with an odd mix of characters.  You will grow wise, yes? and the Includer will grow real.

Ricardo knows our characters because he helps them:

Just to catch-up, here's a few other things I'm involved with:

Tom Ochuka from Deaf Impact in Ahero, Kenya, has just received a laptop that I sent him. We'll get it working for internet-access over the next week or two, in conjunction with his GPRS phone and a bluetooth adapter. One of the things he wants to do with it is video-editing, for some video-dramas that the group record, relating to deaf or hiv education, etc. Tom relies on neighbours with mains electricity to charge all these things. He would like to investigate solar charging, but that's too expensive, so we'll have to put that one on the back burner. All this gear should make communication easier, with MS members and with other deaf groups within Kenya and overseas.

When all the kit is working, I'll try to just help with information, linking Tom and Deaf Impact up with other deaf groups. One interesting experiment could be using sign-language via some webcams that I sent him a few months ago. GPRS connections are a bit slow for this, so he may have to try it from a cyber-cafe. Anyway, if it works, it provides a lot of useful knowledge that other deaf groups may be interested in.

Samwel Kongere [the inspiration for the Includer, see Episode 0] has now got the equipment to set up the first of 5 Information Access Points on Rusinga Island. The first one will be at Nyamuga Primary School, with 2 refurbished PCs from Baobab Communications in Nairobi, plus a printer, scanner and unlimited-time internet access from the Zain mobile phone company (formerly Celtel). They don't advertise that unlimited time/data service, but it is available.

A friend of Fred Kayiwa [we chatted with Fred in Episode 9] said he can share some office space, so I've been helping Fred a little, to start some income activities, using his laptop, doing typing, photocopying, etc. This is only just starting at the moment.

Ken Chelimo has been running a computer/internet business in Eldoret, like a mini telecentre, and he is starting to expand that now.

David Mutua is starting an ICT centre in Kangundo, east of Nairobi. I've been assisting a little with a few items of equipment for that, just to get it started, but most help will have to come from NGOs/Partners.

I'll be having a chat with Josephat Ndibalema from Uyoga some time in the next week, to see how things are going at Uyoga. He was away visiting relatives for a month or so, but back in Dar es Salaam now. Maria and I are co-ordinating what we do with Uyoga, to avoid duplication and to keep things focused on education and community work, rather than business-related things.

I'm still loosely involved with Fantsuam Nigeria. Following Pam McLean's recent visit there, they are doing a lot more photo and video projects [which Ricardo enjoyed, see Episode 2]. I think they will build up their photo/video skills naturally over the next year, just by finding uses for cameras on various projects, such as Ecodomes and Community WiFi. They have been practicing with photos and videos of football skills. I meet up with the camera group online once a month, to see how things are going, and see whether some more formal instruction would be useful. I sent a camera training DVD over with Pam. They liked the video very much, but Pam had to explain that the actor doing the instruction wasn't me!

Mix with our characters!

Pamela McLean invites us to celebrate the fourth anniversary of Teachers Talking at our chat room on Saturday, November 29th,  for about an hour, starting 10:00 GMT, 11:00 Nigerian time, 13:00 Kenyan time. Here are detailed instructions.

Serina Kalande leads a chat to investigate: What are the factors to weigh when 'Blogging Positively', especially working with HIV/AIDS? Come to our chat room on Wednesday, December 3rd, at New York 7:00, London 12:00, Johannesburg, Helsinki 14:00, Nairobi, Moscow 15:00, New Delhi 17:30, Hong Kong 20:00 and meet with representatives of REPACTED (Kenya), AIDS Rights (Democratic Republic of Congo), FrontAIDS and Drop-in center (Russia), and Kwa Mashu Community Advancement Project (South Africa).  Then continue at ActALIVE's discussion group lead by Janet Feldman of Episode 1, Sisterhood!

The Includer is a human-sized device, the product of a human-sized economy, the sum of working one day at a time.

Jackton Arija was the spark for the day in question.  We met him through Samwel Kongere (of Episode 0) and their work to prevent malaria.  Suddenly, with the post-election turmoil in Kenya, we came together to save Jackton and his family:

January 3, 2008: As Sam has said there is no food, no transport and no money and medication.  Right now as speak we dont have food and i am just in the house with my kids boiling hot water and putting some remaining sugar on it for the kids.

January 6, 2008: I thank you all making all efforts for me to have food in my house, Ken Owino sent airtime of Ksh 1500 and Dennis also sent me airtime of ksh750.  I managed to sell and use to buy food in my house and my neighbour who was also lacking food.

On January 8th, Graham Knight donated $100 to our Pyramid of Peace to avert genocide in Kenya.  I hoped that Graham might add his life's passion!

Hi Ricardo, As you may have seen, I'm into low cost solar pv including the recharging of batteries. It can be done very cheaply. Have a look at biodesign.webeden.co.uk and come back with queries.

Meanwhile, Jackton was delivering food.

January 11, 2008: we went to Kendu-bay to give out some food for those who were stuck at the police station... Tomorrow we will be going to Oyugis to give out some food for others who are stuck at Police station

Then one day we got a letter from Peter Ongele.

February 13, 2008: I came to know this man called Arija. he introduced to me and what he is doing in the moment ...  so many who realised that I came from the sides of Sindo and Gwasi highland flocked to have possible assistance of which i could not offer at that time. This man Jactone really helped a lot by advising and organised convenient transport and things became easy for me.

When Peter turned to us for help...

June 4, 2008: After my high school I've worked for several NGOs in both risky and good conditions but this has been on very low pay due to lack of a certificate course. Occationally I've tried to raise money to have a course in Diploma but all has been not on my side. Last year I got one for 3 years on inservice study on Community Health and HIV/AIDS management. I've to register for assesment and college fee. I've to pay some money this year between this month of June and July.

I remembered Graham and the relevance of battery recharging for the Includer...

July 3, 2008: Peter and I spoke by phone and then I sent him $200 so that he could have the money he needs for his certification course. He agreed to do a project for our laboratory, which is to try out the "do it yourself" solar mobile phone battery recharging kit which Graham has created. $100 is for this work and $100 is for a loan which Peter will repay after he gets his certificate, and our lab will relend that money to somebody who could apply it well.

Right away, Peter opened our eyes to rural Kenya:

July 3, 2008: Peter noted that many people are weak from HIV/AIDS and they need alternative work to laboring in the fields. He also notes the great need for electricity because, for example, people in his part of rural Kenya typically turn off their mobile phones after 6:00 pm because they are saving the battery power because they have to walk a long ways to recharge their batteries. So that means that they are not able to make calls to each other in the evening because everybody's phone is turned off.

At the time, I was in Burlington, Vermont at Stephen Wolfram's summer school for A New Kind of Science.  I proposed that our Minciu Sodas laboratory work for him for $200,000 to organize independent thinkers to apply NKS and a culture of investigation to a variety of challenges.  I told him of our $100 project with Peter, an example of thousands we might organize with thinkers we may never meet.  We simply know each other's values and our willingness to work for free on what we care about.

I'm encouraged by the ups and downs of Graham's and Peter's participation and our efforts together.

July 20, 2008 Graham: It has long puzzled me why projects using DIY Solar can 'take off' in some places but not others... Just how do you persuade people to 'have a go'?

November 2008 Graham: I had great hopes that we would get somewhere with this as Peter, unlike most of my African contacts, is prepared to explain his ideas but we don't seem to be getting anywhere.

November 13, 2008 Andrius: You mention that it can take all day to charge a phone (and then I think the phone can't be used). So it seems that one would need an extra supply of batteries to make it useful or people would each need to have their own solar panel. What are the applications for individuals and what are the business possibilities?

November 16, 2008 Peter: I've only sold 3 modules.... I take this as a great step, a start for people to know that there are small Solar modules of low costs which can serve their specific interests before they can raise big moneys to the multi purpose Solar Panels. ... Since Grahams technology is working well,  I see business possibilities and that might be our next project if it would be possible to get micro finance support for it.

By this point, I am thinking hard how to invest my earnings as a math teacher in Bosnia into an economy for the kingdom of heaven.  Peter Burgess and others are encouraging Peter Ongele's wish to document the actual use of malaria bed nets.  Graham is happy, too.

September 25, 2008 Graham: I am delighted to learn of Albert Horowitz's interest in using the DIY Solar technique in Nepal

September 30, 2008: Sabrina Jung of Mina Academy in rural Kenya: I am interested too in that solar energy source!

A lot of light and warmth for $100!

The Includer grows wings.  An idea can't fly on a single wing or even two or three.  An idea soars when inspired from every angle.  Just as a gangster's heart can't shut out love from all directions.  Who among us can take credit for a miracle?  It's the logic of the Glory of a greater Inspirer.

I was disappointed that I didn't submit proposals to the HASTAC or Google calls for projects.  I was simply overwhelmed with my new job, teaching algebra at the American University in Bosnia and Herzegovina.  I am delighted to learn that Ricardo championed the Includer with his great love.

Ricardo: Hi Andrius and all, this is just to let you know that just before the competition-deadline on October 24th 2008, I submitted the entry below, entitled 'Cheap text editor to save on cyber cafe charges'. It's basically one variant of the Includer, a $30 single solar-powered unit like a big calculator, although I didn't use the name Includer.

I hope you don't mind me submitting this, Andrius. I thought the Includer in some form should see the light of day, as it's a good idea. I know the Includer was your idea, so I just described it as 'the idea', not 'my idea'. There was only a few hours before the deadline and I suddenly thought that I didn't know whether you had submitted an entry, so I submitted this one. The Google competition is different to others, because the winning entries would be built by someone else. I suggested 'A chip manufacturer or a technical university like MIT'. We don't have a hardware team, so this way, it stands more chance of getting into production. The second reason I submitted it is to get more people thinking about the problem of the high cost of cyber-cafe time for people in developing countries and 'inclusion in virtual communities'.

Cheap text editor to save on cyber cafe charges

Produce a very cheap ($30) text editor for use in developing countries, to read/write text offline and save money on cyber cafe internet time-charges.

In developing countries, many people earn less than $1 a day, so it's hard to afford much time online at cyber cafes, when they charge $1 an hour. Many people are therefore excluded from the online world and it's information and online communities by these high charges. The idea is to produce a very cheap text-editor device, so people can just use cyber cafes for a few minutes to send and receive emails or message-group postings, transfer the files to/from the text-editor and then spend most of their time reading/writing text offline. I see the device as looking like an over-grown solar-powered calculator with a monochrome non-backlit display, that runs on micro amps, but with an 80 column 4 line display and QWERTY keys. A USB slave interface would let it connect by cable to a cyber café PC, for data-transfer. It could be designed without a rechargeable battery, to keep costs down. While connected to a PC, it could be powered by the USB connection. One variant could work in areas with no internet-access. It would have a memory card slot or USB Host Interface for a flash drive, to send/receive files by Sneakernet or an Infrared interface.

What problem or issue does your idea address?  The high cost of time on the internet for people in developing countries, which excludes them from information and virtual communities.
 
Who would benefit the most?  People on low-incomes in developing countries.

What are the initial steps required to get this idea off the ground? A chip-design company would produce a Reference Design and make it available to manufacturers.

Describe the optimal outcome...  One or more ultra-cheap text editors would be produced, and sold in developing countries. Many more people would have access to information in electronic form.

Fred Kayiwa: Hi Andrius

I'm multitasking as I'm blogging this.  Listening to John McCain's gracious concession and reading Kennedy Owino's and Francis Opiyo Opiyo's rejoicing from Kenya in Barack Obama's victory, and preparing sample test problems for my algebra students here in Bosnia.

The Includer is a device for single tasking.  Samwel Kongere is taking a week for soul searching in rural Kenya.  Peter Ongele is surveying the use (or not) of malaria bed nets.  Kennedy Owino is asking for support for a Minciu Sodas base in Nairobi.  Likewise, I think deeply offline.  Today I developed my idea that God is alone which I need to upload.

Fred Kayiwa: Andrius did you saw my email about Coming Meeting in Geniva?

We chat about the January 23, 2009 meeting of COMMUNIA, the European Union's network for the Public Domain.  We have the COMMUNIA money for Minciu Sodas members to participate, but we struggle to get visas.  In a few minutes, we think through scenarios for his trip.  He has friends in Switzerland.

Is this a chance encounter in our help room? Yes, but he can see from any of our websites that I am here.   I know Fred from his 363 letters to Minciu Sodas and his work for us on small $100 projects.  We share values as independent thinkers, self-directed workers.  We grow ready to help each other in small ways.  He knows I think our help room is key to unlocking the economic value of our inclusive culture.

Our scheduled chats are how we bridge single tasking and multitasking.  Instant messaging is very popular in Africa because you can catch up with several people at once even with a slow connection.  A scheduled event, such as Asif Daya's TrainersPod webinars in 2006-2007, lets us come together thoughtfully.  Pamela McLean championed scheduled chats as a way to encourage African online participants.  I wanted to keep the technology simple to include people with slow Internet connections, and also yield archives in the Public Domain, and foster an online meeting place for our lab.  I was always impressed by the lively chat rooms of the Open Idea Project and the Espians.  In April 2007, I set up ARSC on our server (we may migrate to AjaxChat).  Our scheduled chats are the building blocks for our 24 hour help room.

Chat with us Thursday, November 6
12:00 London, 13:00 Nigeria, 15:00 East Africa.
Pamela McLean invites us to chat on the first Thursday of every month.

I took the World Without Poverty books [by Muhammad Yunus thanks to Chris Macrae] to Fantsuam Foundation. John Dada was very impressed by the Danone yoghurt story. [...] Fantsuam Foundation [in Nigeria] is constructing some fish ponds at the eco-village. It has already done some learning about fish farming, at its first Fish Farm at Bayan Loco. [...] Our chat will be led by Nikki - from Dadamac UK - as I will be attending an OpenEverything [...] Building our skills at communcating online is an important part of LearningFromEachOther

Chat with us Friday, November 7
10:00 Chicago, 16:00 London, 18:00 Harare

Children's author Masimba Biriwasha returned to Zimbabwe when the power sharing agreement was signed.  He's an eloquent blogger and thoughtful organizer.  I hope we might organize around him with regular chats to respond to the heartbreaking Zimbabwean reality along with many brave hearts there, such as Bev Clark of Freedom Fone and Alex Weir of 3DWCD.

Masimba is organizing the sending of books to Zimbabwe.  I'd like to support distribution of "print-on-demand" books by our participants (like blogs by Marcin Jakubowski or Flemming Funch) and thereby build relationships.  I'd like to experiment with community currency in Zimbabwe (which has a huge inflation rate).  We might also send women's sanitary wear.  As Janet Feldman says, Pads for Peace.

Chat with us Saturday, November 8
10:00 Chicago, 16:00 London, 19:00 East Africa

Fred Kayiwa of Uganda staffs our chat room on Saturdays thanks to a $100 gift from St.Benedict the African's choir.  We're taking our first steps to link Chicago and Africa with our chat room.  Last Saturday I called David Ellison-Bey with Skype and walked him step-by-step through the links into our chat room.

David: andrius, can you read me

Andrius Kulikauskas: Yes, wonderful!

David's words give me hope that he might engage us as an elder in our online community.  Charles Williams visited us at David's home and I want to give him $100 for his further help to set up Skype on the laptop I bought for David last year which he's not yet managed to use as we hoped.  Maybe even dual boot Ubuntu alongside the Windows Vista which is so slow.  My goal is that we all video bridge with David using video Skype as we did for the Global Utopias project.  We need friends to be friends.

You are a true friend, a warm human being. You sense and you respond. You are our Includer!

Andrius Kulikauskas / The Includer from Knight News Challenge on Vimeo.

I love to workopenly. The Knight News Challenge has us publicly share our proposals. Hundreds of them are pouring in today, the last day. How many of them are original ideas? Myself, I don't care. I have no shortage of ideas. Out of context, they are worthless. Instead, I am looking for context. Wealth is relationships. How can we build relationships? How might we include the unincluded, the people who are "out of the loop"? Isn't that how we create wealth?

I have sifted through a few hundred of the proposals. I hope they aren't taken down. I've noted the ones that I believe create context. I left comments. I wish them luck. I hope they might consider working together, working for free, alongside each other, so that our endeavors might evolve together, and we grow together as well. This is the logic of my Minciu Sodas laboratory for independent thinkers. (Write to me at ms@ms.lt !)

The News Challenge website leaves it unclear, who are the authors of the proposals? which frustrates our chances to work together. I am trying even so because tomorrow they may all be dashed, like sand at a beach.

Underincluded Regions

I am moved by all efforts in faraway places.

• I leap at the thought of a Tehran Bureau (please link with our blogger Sahar Maranlou).
• Michael Bengwayan's Agri-Eco E-Centers Philippines advances Franz Nahrada's vision of Global Villages (please join his working group!)
• Davis Weddi (active at our lab!) proposes a mobile phone notice board for an urban slum and a rural district in Uganda. And previous Knight News Challenge winners similarly propose African Village Reporters Project. Might we work together?
• Timothy McGinnis, also of Uganda, proposes a website about Internet access in Africa, please see Pamela McLean's working group Learning From Each Other, Fred Kayiwa's One Reaching Another, and Ricardo's pages about Internet access.
• The Smallholders Farmers Rural Radio in Imo, Nigeria, please note that Pamela travels often to Nigeria and also Janet Feldman of Holistic Helping is always interested in community radio.
• Empowering Education in Rural India using the World Wide Web by an engineer in West Bengal, please note our thinkers Surya Rao Maturu and Umesh Rashmi Rohatgi and Edward Cherlin's working group Earth Treasury to support and expand the vision of One Laptop Per Child.
• Colombia - The Friends Of My Friends Are My Friends will make transparent the social network that runs Colombia.
• University of Culiacan students in Mexico (our lab is assembling in Spanish)

Underincluded Groups

At our lab, Kennedy Owino, Mark Roest, Janet Feldman, Wendi Losha Bernadette and Benoit Couture have stirred to reach out to the Differently Abled. I am stirred by several proposals which reach out to specific groups:

• Barry Shell proposes Lab Direct: giving graduate students a voice Graduate students will transform how we think about science by sharing thier work-in-progress by video.
• The children of the London Olympics will have us Think 2012.
• Walter Bender of Sugar Labs proposes Gray Matters: Bringing community expression to the elderly.

Open Culture

Several projects cultivate the sharing of content. How might we share people?

• David Adewumi proposes Heekya: Wikipedia for Stories -- social storytelling for metros and locales. A great idea - I note our lab's work on My Food Story.
• The Open Government Project (google for government) inspired by Barack Obama.
• Nir Ofir of Israel proposes IAMNEWS.COM, an open newsroom platform providing tools for realtime crowdsourced news creation.
• In Search of Heroes - Connecting individuals to the world highlights local heroes, just like our independent thinkers!
• The Committee to Democratize Information Technology, founded by Rodrigo Baggio Barreto, wants to leverage its network of 753 schools in Brazil and Latin America to develop a social networking architecture relevant for people with limited Internet access. Certainly relevant for our Includer. I note my 2003 proposal for a Social Networking Kit optimized for marginal Internet connectivity.
• Micah Fink, Michael Hickey and a score of advisers, including architect Kazys Varnelis, propose a story map approach to integrate multiple perspectives on the mortgage crisis.

Emergency Response

My priority for the Minciu Sodas laboratory is a thriving help room much as we had this year to avert genocide in Kenya. I am very interested in disaster management efforts. Can we work together?

• Scott Polk proposes WorldSafe Disaster Management and Alert System, a Drupal system for municipal emergency workers inspired by his work to help refugees from Hurricane Katrina.
• Max Mayfield, the former director of the National Hurricane Center, and Bryan Norcross, the former hurricane analyst for CBS News, propose AEN - The Community Emergency Communications System to distribute text and video feeds by satellite whenever local communications fail.
• Jeffrey Hunt, an attorney, proposes a wireless Help Network to serve the marginalized - the homeless, mentally ill, drug addicts, the poor - to encourage just-in-time, positive interaction with support teams.

The Challenge

The Knight News Challenge is learning how to support open culture. This year all proposals were expected to be public. The Garage provided public support. Perhaps some day soon the review process will likewise be open and public. I wish the content was all straight and out Public Domain, rather than the worst-of-breed "share alike" Creative Commons license, which is incompatible with the Public Domain.

Open culture is the interplay of open people rather than open ideas. I proposed an idea, but actually, I proposed to bring it to life. I and my team didn't win funding to build Includers. Instead, I won the chance to blog about them at the PBS Idealab website. But what is the point of blogging about a one-year-old idea? My challenge is to link together those who care and bring to life something new. The challenge I bring to the Knight Foundation is to call for knights - for champions - for includers, rather than for ideas like the Includer.

The Includer is the voting machine for ones dreams.

(There are no apostrophes on this Bosnian keyboard.)

I am blogging thanks to last years Knight News Challenge.  November 1 is the last day to apply this year.

What I really like about this contest is that everybody can see your entry.  Here is mine: Help Room.  Please rate my entry and add your comments!

Paul Bradshaw (Birmingham City University), Stefan Lewandowski (3form media) and Nick Booth (former BBC journalist) have teamed together to propose Help Me Investigate. Com, an online iterative open-source investigatory community.

I was hoping to draw attention to more entries, but right now the News Challenge website is impossibly slow.  All those electrons waiting in line.

I hope the entries arent all taken down after November 1.  That is what happened last year.

Its also unfortunate (antiviral - antiseptic) that they use such long urls.

And when I uploaded my picture file with Firefox, it didnt show.  I tried five times and then I was told I could not upload more files.  So I have uploaded the same file five times. There is no way to delete files. Thank you to Jose Zamora for explaining.

Grumble, grumble, grumble...

I am glad that this year there was the Knight News Challenge garage.  I wasnt able to participate because I flew to Bosnia to start a full time job as a math professor. (Thank you to Stanko Blatnik for recommending me!)

I suggest an ongoing campaign (or garage) to support projects.  I think thats the spirit of Help Me Investigate . Com  Its certainly the spirit of my Minciu Sodas laboratory.  If you would like help to make your dreams come true, please join one of our groups.  We work for free, publicly, in the Public Domain, and as we help each other we organize teams and seek opportunities to work for pay.

I think some day well discover that campaigns can change the world themselves, without political power.  Imagine a candidate who doesnt have all the answers, but rather has a few great questions, and invites our help as they look for answers.  Hillary Clinton took such steps, at least she did at her website, a year ago.

The Includer is for those "candidates" who work for change and get things done even without power or office.  Im not allowed to impact the outcome of any election.  But if you are voting in a state or country where the outcome is already decided - if you are not in a swing state or a battleground state - then consider voting for a loser:  I know you wont win today, but I hope you win some day!

Ethan Zuckerman once told me that thousands applied for Geek Corps, but only dozens were accepted.  I told him, give me your losers!  And so I ask for your vote, your comment, your rating for myself and many other losers!

The Minciu Sodas laboratory includes an online chat room. (Our new domain is: www.helproom.org)

We wish to staff our chat room around-the-clock as a central venue to:

• organize a worldwide culture of independent thinkers
• live as family, help each other, welcome all, care and share
• think out loud and grow as independent thinkers
• learn to participate in online venues such as wikis, discussion groups, blogs
• help each other tutor, research, counsel, shop, learn IT, translate, advise, spread news, make contacts and find work
• support ongoing projects and personal endeavors
• respond to emergencies.

In three years we wish to run our chat room as a sustainable business. We will develop independent income streams to support:

• 1 full-time business developer
• 1 part-time software developer
• 3 full-time organizers who attract participants in different time zones
• 16 part-time chat coaches who engage and help all who come
• 64 volunteer hosts who lead regular chats to advance team projects and related business proposals

We will staff our 24-hour chat room in:

• Africa and Europe
• the Americas
• Asia and Australia

We will do outreach in the United States, Latin America, India and China. We will chat in English but also other languages, including Lithuanian, Kiswahili, Bosnian-Serbian-Croatian, Spanish and Chinese.

We work publicly, in the Public Domain.

Our chat room will be the central hub of a social network of 10,000 online participants who actively help each other to help 1,000,000 people on-the-ground.

How will your project improve the way news and information are delivered to geographic communities?

In 2008, Minciu Sodas was the online world's most responsive network for helping Kenyans during the post-election turmoil. At our chat room, we coordinated the flow of news from SMS and Skype and letters to wiki to Ushahidi and blogs and reporters. We organized response.

Our chat room is an entryway where we greet people. We ask them what they value, investigate, wish to achieve? We embrace people with marginal Internet skills and access. We sign them up for discussion groups and our Ning social network. We teach them to use wikis. We help every person be newsworthy.

We wish to help everybody who wants global response, whether to a personal concern or a regional emergency.

How is your idea innovative?

We propose to organize around our chat room as the center of our social networking world.

We live in a world that is 90% business and 10% charity. Instead, we seek a world where 90% is helping each other for free and 10% is extra paid work.

Our chat room is all purpose for all people. We engage each person as an independent thinker of universal interest. We foster a culture of sharing, inclusion, Public Domain, working for free alongside working for pay.

Our culture attracts helpful thinkers in Africa and Eastern Europe who staff our chat room for modest stipends from sponsors (such as churches) and business opportunities (such as translation). Our chat room organizers offer global teams for emergencies and strategic projects.

What experience do you or your organization have to successfully develop this project?

In 1998, Andrius Kulikauskas founded Minciu Sodas as an online network for independent thinkers. We have 200 active and 2,000 supportive participants. We have written 30,000 letters in 30 working groups, and 4,000 wiki pages, in the Public Domain.

In April 2007, we finished work on My Food Story for Unamesa Association. For $24,000, we organized 100 workers in Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Cameroon, Nigeria, Palestine, Lithuania, Latvia, Serbia, India and the USA to collect 2,000 food stories.

Sasha Mrkailo of Serbia then staffed our ARSC Chat room and taught people how to use our wiki. Andrius customized the software. We have had 85,000 lines of chat.

Every first Thursday, Pamela McLean leads a chat to link poor-bandwidth Africans and rich-bandwidth Westerners so that we learn from each other. We chat to build teams, engage groups, welcome newcomers and coach activists. We chat as we work online.

In 2008, we organized the Pyramid of Peace of 100 helpers online and 100 peacemakers on-the-ground to avert genocide in Kenya. We coordinated our leaders to overcome tribal anger, engage gangs and open roads for food, medicine, fuel and refugees. We contributed and distributed $25,000 to about 1,000 volunteers who helped about 10,000 people directly and 100,000 people indirectly. We shared mobile phone credits as an emergency community currency. We saved lives.

Kenya's Internally Displaced Persons, February 2008.

We can embed our organizers from East Africa and Eastern Europe in other time zones such as inner city Chicago, rural Missouri, Silicon Valley and Oaxaca, Mexico. We have contacts in India and China. Andrius can organize in Spanish and Chinese.

We have a vibrant gift economy. St.Benedict the African parish choir in Chicago is sponsoring Fred Kayiwa of Uganda to staff our chat room on Saturday mornings, 10:00 am Chicago time, 4:00 pm London, 6:00 pm Nairobi.

Thank you for your comments!

Yes. I have a pension and Social Security sufficient for my needs. I worked 20 years as an office assistant for the State of Illinois. I have a college degree in accounting. I have addressed many questionable aspects of my financial situation. I am getting help from my friend, Andrius Kulikauskas. We are writing this letter together.

Why did I not make my mortgage payments on time?

I was disoriented - discombobulated - because of too much pressure in my life, as I explain below. I am a sensitive, compassionate, elderly man, and thus vulnerable. I live in a vulnerable neighborhood that suffers the worst exploitations of the racial caste system. I was not able to put my problems in perspective because of a tricky and corrupt system, a lack of peers, and a lack of human contact with functional people.

How did this happen?

I am an observer of the human condition. All of my life, I have worked towards fellowship of all peoples. I have dedicated myself to uplifting fallen humanity. I am a minister of the Moorish Science Temple of America. I am Assistant National Grand Sheik. I have invested myself to help my people, the Moors, but sadly, so many have died by foul play, old age, sickness, FBI, gangs, AIDS. I live in this house which my grandparents left me. I choose to stay here because I don't want to abandon the children. I have taught them for years - yoga, spirituality, recycling, gardening - my Moorish Cultural Workshop - so they can be responsible and useful members of society. People come to me for help, many of them abusive and unreliable.

I lived next door to my mother. December, 1996, she had a stroke and I was forced to put her in a nursing home until she finished her rehab. My relative took her from the nursing home without my permission, took her out-of-state, and I never saw her again. I was traumatized because everywhere I went for help to get my mother back, I was turned away. I went to the Veterans Administration and started seeing a psychologist / gerontologist who prescribed medication so that I could sleep, eat and concentrate. My mother passed away September 14, 2007.

I asked the State's Attorney's office to find my mother. They asked whether the estate was worth over $35,000 ? If not, they couldn't do anything. In 2000, while I was visiting my psychologist, I met two Moorish brothers who had a company, Axiom Mortgage Corporation, which helped arrange loans. I felt that if I had $35,000 in the bank, then I would be safe from what happened to my mother. If anything happened to me, they would investigate.

I received a mortgage loan of $41,250 from Accredited Home Lenders. The servicing of my mortgage loan was transferred to Advanta Mortgage. In 2003, I was enticed to redo my loan with Mercantile Mortgage Company, and it went up to $57,000. It was transferred to Mortgage Lenders Network USA, Inc., and then to Aurora Loan Services on March 1, 2007. I fixed my roof, put up siding and storm windows. In 2003, I got a second mortgage from Green Tree through a contractor. They redid my bathroom, which was important to me, because I was crippled with arthritis. In 2007, I had $22,000 in CDs.

These last two years I suffered pressures that were too much for me. One thing after another! I conducted so many funerals for my associates. My mother died and I couldn't go to her funeral because there was nobody I could trust my house to.

I helped the caretaker of our temple's farm in Pembroke. I paid the taxes on the land. My truck broke down driving back and forth. I then purchased a used car at an auction. I got a ticket after the temporary license plate expired and I never received my license plate through the mail. It was misdirected to the auction house. In July 2006, the court dismissed the ticket, but I had to pay $27 for parking downtown. Then I started getting tickets every week, mostly at night, parked in front of my house, because the car had half-mirrored tinted windows, which I didn't realize was illegal to drive, and I didn't know could be stripped off. Meanwhile, the caretaker was starving, without toilet, electricity or phone. I felt like the system in Chicago, Illinois - the auction place, the courts, the police, the city, the state - were set against me. Illinois Governor George Ryan and Chicago City Clerk James Laski were put in jail, Governor Rod Blagojevich is under investigation, and the City of Chicago is run by the machine. I also got tickets on my truck because it was broken, I had to park it on the street and I couldn't move it for the street sweepers. I was alone, everybody turned away from me, nobody championed my cause. You can't fight City Hall. I believed that these injustices must come to a head. People must become aware. I refused to pay until I just had to. The city bullied me, multiplying the fines, towing my truck, holding it and threatening to crush it, and threatening to put a lien on my house. The supervisor of the administrative judges laughed at me. November 2007, I paid $2600 to free my truck and then $600 for my car. I cashed some of my CDs for that and then to pay for mechanics to work on them, but neither of them runs.

June 2007, I asked my doctor's office, who could take care of my ingrown toe nails? They suggested the podiatrist across the street. I believed that my insurance company, Humana, would pay for the procedure. They refused to pay the $500 bill because I did not have a written referral from my doctor.

That summer, ten or twelve young people attacked me as I was stopping my truck at a stop sign. They had blocked traffic. I signed up for a cell phone. My friend referred me to a Sprint plan which would allow us to speak nights and weekends for free. I went into shock when I got a bill for $325.74. They were charging me $1 per minute. I felt paralyzed. I didn't pay the bill and I was too shocked to call them. I didn't use the phone, but they kept charging me for service, until the bill was more than $600. This summer, my friend helped them understand the situation, and they agreed to settle for $240.

That fall, a US Energy Savings representative came to my door and claimed that if I signed up for them to be my gas supplier through People's Gas, my prices would stay fixed even if the price went up in the world markets. That winter, I got bills that were much higher than before, and kept going up. I had trouble coping and so I simply paid what I could every month. The outstanding bill grew to $1,700. In June, it's not clear why, US Energy Savings was dropped as my supplier.

Around that time, my bill was readjusted to reflect the actual usage, and it went down. Finally, a charge of $719 was removed from the bill, and US Energy Savings is asking me directly to pay that bill. I don't yet know whether to pay this bill or not. I have learned that in February, 2008, Attorney General Lisa Madigan filed a lawsuit against US Energy Savings for using deceptive sales tactics, especially against the elderly.

December, 2007, my basement flooded and my space heater was knocked out. I had to pay about $800 to two handymen and a professional. August 2008, my basement flooded again, this time knocking out my water heater. I was able to get it fixed for $120.

Meanwhile, my AT&T telephone bills were getting higher. This summer we became aware that a chain of phony services had attached themselves to my phone bill without my permission. Since the beginning of the year, AT&T collected more than $400 for them. These services agreed to desist and to refund me this money, but appeared again on the very next bill!

I've stopped going to my doctor and my psychiatrist. I've gone without new glasses. My dentures are broken.

As we are writing we have heard two episodes of half a dozen shots. The police have not shown up during the hour. This Monday, a man was killed and two others wounded in the empty lot next to me. We have turned out the lights. I have the shakes. My chest became tight and my breathing shallow.

I think you understand my state of mind. November 2007, I paid my house insurance. Usually, I receive a letter from my mortgage company, asking for my policy. I don't know if I didnt receive one this year or I simply forgot to send my policy to Aurora Loan Services. Please note that my insurance company has recently sent you this policy. Also, every year I qualify for the Senior Freeze so that I don't have to pay the $1,500 property tax. However, this year my cat pissed on the bill, my duplicating machine broke, my twenty cats died, my cars aren't running, and so I never got around to making a duplicate of the form. For these reasons my mortgage payment was recalculated at the beginning of the year and went up from $480.63 to $950.36. I didn't understand the amount. I called up Aurora Loan Services to inquire and they said that I had missed a month. That didn't seem right, but I sent in the payment. I got confused. I kept getting such large bills. I thought I was catching up with them. Then in July I was served with foreclosure papers. The check which I had just sent out was returned. I called to set up a payment plan, and wired the first payment, but Aurora Loan Services returned that payment because I had not yet signed the papers which it was late in sending out to me. I have made the first three payments as agreed in the forebearance agreement.

What do I ask for now?

I wish, as before, to pay off my mortgage with monthly payments of $480.63

I have been billed by Aurora Loan Services for legal fees of $1,546. Please explain and itemize these legal fees.

I wish I had a relationship with a person from Aurora Loan Services. Giving loans is a privilege chartered by the government for the good of the people. (Or is it to fleece, to rob the people? That's what I get out of it. Black people are sent into black neighborhoods by white people who have educated them into how to talk and convince unsuspecting people how to help them. And we fall for it because we always need money. We never get paid as much as white people get paid. I have never made more than $25,000 a year. But I have always worked, even before I had working papers, since I was eleven, for a dollar a day, summer and winter.)

Aurora Loan Services purchased my mortgage and never sent anybody to build a personal relationship. I wish for face-to-face rapport. I almost gave up on white people. They try in every way to not be in a black person's presence, beyond any length of time they need to convince them of what they want to convince them of. Once they convince them, they are out of your life forever. Then they sit back and count your money into their pocket with fees, fines, penalties, taxes and interest. I have documents regarding the non-profit status of my Moorish Cultural Workshop (part of the Moorish Science Temple of America), my status as a minister, and guaranteed home loans covered by the Veterans Administration, but nobody cares. I get no respect.

I wish for your computers to identify people who need real help, such as the elderly who have no family, no relatives, no peers, and live in a hostile neighorhood. Pay attention to unexpected behavior, such as not renewing the Senior Freeze, or not sending in various documents. We are bombarded by bills every day, including lawyers and experts offering to assist with foreclosures, whereas noone actually volunteers to help. Your computers identify the vulnerable for marketing, and they can identify them for your good service as well.

Aurora Loan Services discouraged me from getting a lawyer, right after it had served me papers and then forced me to pay its legal fees. The lawyers did no work, but they are the first to be paid. Not a fraction of that money was spent to investigate my situation, serve my needs, and heal our relationships.

I ask you to pay for your own legal fees.

I inform you that I wish to pay my property tax myself. The clerk at the County Assessor's office instructed me not to pay the latest property tax bill because she approved my Senior Freeze application, but you insist on paying this bill and adding it to my mortgage and charging me interest! Why?

I am bitter. I always pay my bills because my parents brought me up to pay my bills. This house was paid for, free and clear, when my grandfather left it to me in his will.

This house is and was a home for many generations of my family. It is also a cultural center known as the Moorish Cultural Workshop, a positive influence on children, youth and adults. It is known internationally as an office of Minciu Sodas, a worldwide laboratory for independent thinkers working for world peace and understanding. I invite you to partner with us. Contribute to this house as a center of rebirth for our neighborhood and all the world. Let our activity be a touchstone for borrowers and lenders. You might find your role. We can share our resources so that we own our blocks. I might be bitter, but I am still hopeful that we might come together in peace and love and understanding and overstanding.

The idea is to get mobile phone manufacturers to add a USB Host Interface to fairly cheap GPRS mobile phones, so they can control peripherals, such as cheap PC Keyboards, flash drives, etc, and more expensive devices like printers, where the cost is shared among many people in a village, business, school, medical centre, etc.

With the ability to connect to peripherals, the phone becomes an open, expandable system. People can use phones as the heart of a computer system, in a similar way to a laptop or PC. They are no longer limited to the phone keypad. They can write emails more easily, type messages for discussion groups, enter text into web-forms, etc. The ability to download information from the web and print it out will benefit the wider community, not just the actual phone-owner. It could be useful for web-pages, health leaflets, teaching material or anything that people currently print using PCs.

With a USB Host Interface, people can use cheap $5-$10 PC Keyboards, etc, that are already available in developing countries. They don't need an expensive smart-phone or expensive $60 Bluetooth/Infrared Keyboards.

I suggested adding USB Host capability, for basic text-entry, ahead of expensive, luxury features like camera-phone capability. The competition doesn't have a prize. It's just for people to submit socially-useful ideas that will benefit a lot of people. Google allows you to suggest an organization to implement the idea, if it's a winner. I suggested they submit the idea to a major phone manufacturer, if it's one of the 5 winners.

Closing date for entries is October 20th, 2008.  100 shortlisted ideas will be published on January 27th, 2009.

Let's connect the scattered dots.

David Ellison-Bey and I are still up.  The police are still searching outside.  They have the measuring tape out.  A couple of hours ago we heard a crackly crackle of what I thought was fireworks, but David understood was a gunfight.  I went outside when David alerted me to the police lights. I thought, I must get there before they ticket my grandmother's car.

She told me today, don't take her car, it has gone through so much. When I let it overheat two weekends ago, so that the green antifreeze gurgled out onto Devon street, her mechanic explained that it was only good for short trips.  She was afraid that it would break down and have to be towed.  She loves me, but I got that $50 parking ticket last Tuesday at David's house, 6726 S Parnell Ave, in the heart of Chicago's South Side, when I didn't notice the Street Cleaning signs, which I supposed went up that same morning.  The youths on the porch across the street disagreed when I approached them regarding that.  I was fearless.  I said, alert us next time, if you see our cars out, which they surely thought bizaare, but they heard me out.

And my grandmother shook the phone bill at me last week. She said that I spoke too long to Lithuania, but no, I realized that AT&T had billed $100 for my 12 minutes.  When she came back from the hospital, she had told me, could it be that God had brought me to her this summer, just before she fell and broke her hip? She recovered from hip replacement surgery like a beautiful athlete of 91 years, a peasant girl from Lithuania.  Today, she trotted out to the yard with her cane, and I trimmed the bush for her.  I was good, but why do bad things happen to me?  I need to help David, he needs to make his foreclosure payment, and such, and his car is not running. But those are not my problems, those are David's, she says.  Oh, I've been using her car to hop back and forth between her house and David's, but not much longer.  She tells me, as in recent years, that she'll not renew her driver's license, though we hope she might, yet I sense she frets so about her car's life.  You may take it, she relents, but I slip a notch deeper in depression.

Now the car, if that was hers, was diagonal in the street, I presumed smashed. I walk up among the three officers around it.  This is my grandmother's car. And what is it doing here? There was not a nick. I suppose some youths lifted it up, and set it down?  No, it had been pushed out into the street by a car that had rounded through the grass lot, apparently driven by a man who had been shot, who thereby managed to speed away down our one-way street, the wrong way, only to come to a final stop.

I just spoke with a policeman.  Two people died.  He advised me that there will be retaliation, back and forth, with the west side of the 7th district.  Take precautions.

My grandmother's car has a guardian angel.  Everybody else is doomed.

David has a car and a truck.  Neither has run this last half year, but he gets hundreds of dollars in tickets.  I know his street mechanics.  Lovely people.  One is so gentle, so friendly, so mechanically attuned.  He has no car, so David and I picked him up with my grandmother's.  He diagnosed all its sounds.  I showed him Marcin Jakubowski's Factor E Farm videos, the open source tractor and the solar turbine.  We can do that in David's yard as part of the Moorish Cultural Workshop.  We can build that in the empty lot.  Someday, we could buy that lot.  I encourage him, what does he dream of?  Yes, he would love to. I meet his wife. They have been married for thirty-three years, an eternity.  David, you agree? He explains, and without knowing any facts, I am left with the thoughts, that the most lovely human can be a heroin addict, for whom no dream can ever be greater than heroin. Today, I find David at his kitchen table with another adviser, a helpful man who loves me like a brother.  David notes later, this man is a registered sex offender, convicted of raping his wife.  And so the South Side of Chicago is a country of second-class citizens.  The best of us have names, but I can't share them if I want to share the truth, which is to say, hearsay.  The rest of us don't have names, while we roam "freely" on the streets.  Slaves don't have names, I challenged the nameless youth at the corner store.

Christopher Russell came by today.  David told him not to keep anything at the house, but Chris didn't want to hear it.  David's 72 years old, and it's not for him to care for 24 year old Chris, and deal with his tribulations, who shot at who, who steals what, who is after him, where will he spend the night, his baby boy Chris Jr., his baby's mom.  I keep my goodness small.  Some hot milk with honey.  A book on Zen Buddhism.  I drove him to the El with my grandmother's car, when he feared that he might be jumped.  I didn't let him into the house and he got insolent, yet I stood up to him and he backed down.  He asked me to keep after him to do the right thing.  He took me to his Kingdom Hall. I took him and David to the House of Culture, 618 E 71st Str, that creative hope, where Lord Cashus exalted David, the only real Moor in the house.

David, I say, I know that you can't take on Chris and his challenges.  Yet you are my link to him.  You attract him. Thanks to you, I might help him, if others might help me. And he might help us reach out to the youth on the porch. And they might share Love, Truth, Peace, Freedom and Justice, as the Prophet says.

Next to the house with a porch is a memorial.  Now it is a T-shirt on a chain-link fence.  Before there was a pile of stuffed animals.  David was there when he was shot, two years ago.  Walter.

This late-night episode is a retaliation, a memorial, for two men who are so distant.

Thank you to our African participants - Samwel Kongere, Kennedy Owino, Fred Kayiwa, Peter Ongele, Kofi Thompson, James Njunge, William Wambura, Wendi Losha Bernadette, Joseph Runnel Lule, Betty Kyewa, Josephat Ndibalema and many more! - for giving our Minciu Sodas laboratory such great vitality around the world.

We're impressed at your enthusiasm to overcome challenges - traveling miles to the Internet cafe by foot, bus or taxi - paying $1 an hour or $100 a month - waiting your turn, suffering power outages, slow bandwidth, worrying about coming home safe at night.

One year ago I asked for our help to work on a flash drive editor, a device for our African participants at home to read and write emails stored on their USB flash drives, so they could upload and download them later at an Internet cafe. We now call this the Includer. This endeavor is fantastic and strategic in that it helps us appreciate the importance of many related endeavors and make progress on them all. Similarly, Marcin Jakubowski's open source tractor is a "keystone species" for a whole "ecosystem" of endeavors in appropriate technology.

What have we achieved in this year? Our greatest success is that Ricardo is with us. I learned of Ricardo through his Sneakernet page at the OLPC wiki. Ricardo is a software engineer in the UK. He works with Samwel Kongere, Dan Otedo, David Mutua to set up Internet access centers. He sent refurbished laptops to many of our lab's participants. He solves and documents technical challenges such as how to get online with a phone. He is organizing trading clubs and helping Kenneth Chelimo and others get established on PayPal and eBay. He has written dozens of pages at our wiki and made very concrete the technical options (Bluetooth, PDA, laptop motherboard and so on) for us to pursue for our Includer.

I won a 2008 Knight News Challenge Award to blog about the Includer at the PBS website. Thanks to an idea from Barry Dobyns, I wrote a proposal that online services fund us to develop offline versions. I am very glad for Ed Prentice's help from Silicon Valley, and also I had lunch with Christian Crumlish of Yahoo! and Charles Warren at Google. The world is definitely moving towards simpler laptops and e-book readers. Yet I haven't been able to make the needed contacts to take the Includer closer to reality.

The challenges for our Includer are:

• The market for the Includer is a moving target. Many people might benefit from the Includer, but typically, within a year or two or three, they will have moved on to have their own laptop and Internet access. Franz Nahrada and I observed in Hungary a similar challenge with telecottages, which are very meaningful when nobody has Internet, but within two or three years they generate a demand for Internet at home, which can make the telecottages not so relevant.
• We don't have a leader in Africa to champion the Includer. We know from our African participants that it's a worthwhile idea. But they are finding ways to get computers and get online (often thanks to Ricardo!) So we have to consider who in Africa cares about the Includer and why.
• I haven't been able to make corporate contacts with budgets who might pay us to develop interfaces or to organize large global teams. I spent five weeks in Silicon Valley but didn't get very far. However, we are getting more participants there. We need a corporate strategy - if there was a company with five Minciu Sodas participants, then we would surely get paid work. If we keep writing our dreams and identifying who we'd like to work for, then we can work across our network to make the links (through LinkedIn, FaceBook, events) and organize independent thinkers in corporations.
• We don't have a hardware team or even a software team. We'd like to have students, retirees or other enthusiasts who we could send hardware parts to for trying out small projects. There's a lot of software that we could develop and try out. We also need a project leader. Ricardo doesn't want to make that commitment.

I thanked Ricardo and asked him what he's found most fun and meaningful. He's very excited about his work with Pamela McLean and John Dada. Pamela is traveling in Nigeria and she is forming digital camera clubs there. Ricardo is preparing a photo editing course for them. Ricardo is a photography enthusiast. Pamela has linked a class in a Nigerian school with Steve Thompson's class at his school in the UK. Everyday they are exchanging a photo and a caption, showing to each other their everyday lives. This is very exciting and shows how David Mutua and others at Teachers Talking are reaching out to include other Africans into our online world.

Ricardo and I agreed on four priorities, in the order below, for our work on the Includer and marginal Internet access:

1. What would you like to share online? We want to encourage our African online experts to reach out and include more people. William Wambura in Tanzania teaches the children. Fred Kayiwa in Uganda leads a soccer team and has relatives in the village. Wendi Losha Bernadette links us with women in Cameroon. Samwel Kongere is training women at an ICT center in Kenya. Involving them would make our network much more valuable. How would they like to participate online? What groups would they like to engage? What kind of software or hardware innovations would be helpful?
2. What is the business value of such people with marginal Internet access? Who might value our work as individuals or large teams? What can we do useful online and offline? What markets might we foster?
3. What are new technical solutions that we might develop and promote? Ricardo thinks of many, including broadcasting data by FM radio from community radio stations (I note also One World), or having a large display that works with a mobile phone by Bluetooth (see Jeff Hawkins's Foleo and also netbooks, there are more than twenty of them).
4. What technical skills (hardware, software) might we encourage in Africa and around the world? for building Includers or even open source tractors? and how might we help and organize open source hardware makers?

I encourage us to write about all of the above, but especially reaching out and including those further out. Our next step is to survey our African participants about how they access the Internet. I am still looking for a smart way to set that up online. I have set up a Ning social networking site which I invite us to join. I will try to set up the survey there (I found this software). Then we will know the kinds of people we are reaching out to, the kinds of uses for the Includer, and the different kinds of Includers we might work to develop.

Thank you all for inspiring us and including us!

We all wish to thank Janet for her wonderful contribution written out on our behalf which first read exactly as if she was writing from our minds eyes. It is wonderful that you could read our minds directly as if you were here with us. We all read through your letter and that of Andrius and others but we were really moved from the bottom of our hearts that you understood our problems and have the know-how and an inside into our NGOs works here with all its challenges.

Janet Feldman is a social networker of contagious empathy. A respiratory ailment ended her career in the US State Department. As she cares for her own life, she cares for others. She's the founder of Kenya AIDS Intervention Prevention Project Group, and the international arts coalition ActALIVE. At home, in Rhode Island, she cares for her father.

I would like to learn how to balance caregiving for an aging parent with time spent on my own work.

The Includer is about feeling the presence of another, their mind, soul, heart, so vividly so that we grow strong to respond. Wendi:

I have my life's dreams that I started nursing from childhood as I was growing and witnessing my mother and her eight mates all suffering in my fathers house as we are from a polygamous home. ... I am the first child and being a girl, I was discriminated upon not to go to school but to grow up quickly and get married. So from that time I developed a likeness for education of a girl child as well as education of rural women. I saw education now as a means to get rid of a forceful marriage, and making a choice of a husband etc for myself.

In 2005, Janet agreed to lead our Minciu Sodas working group Holistic Helping, which is her deepest value in life. (Join us!) She monitors sixty discussion groups and she ever wonders whether she has time for this. She asks:

How can I help those individuals who are coming to me, while also taking care myself, and generate a ripple effect into a wider community?

I ever argue that her group Holistic Helping, working openly, allows others to jump in and learn to help each other by her example. Janet:

I believe that creativity and all forms of communication will truly help to save the world, one painting or radio program or email at a time!

Janet lavishes love on the weakest people with the smallest projects. This can't make sense in a world that optimizes resources, which is to say, acknowledged resources. Janet makes a new world. She values every seed and every soil. Janet is an Includer.

My story is real, except for the Includer, which may yet some day be real as well. The Includer is a device for Africans or anybody to read and write emails and other texts stored on their USB flash drives. Once a week they might walk the three miles or so to their Internet cafe to upload their emails and download more.

The Includer is the hero of our every episode. I am simply the blogger for the Includer. I am real... so what. Yet I suppose that you matter. I will draw my characters and I will draw you in with them.

Samwel Kongere lives on Rusinga Island in Lake Victoria, in Kenya. He walks three miles, crossing a sandbar, to Mbita Point, on the mainland. In 2005, he used to get online at the butterfly research station. That's what I call "marginal Internet access", which is any kind of limitation on your life online. I can imagine, they could only let him hang around so many hours of the day. Thank you, butterfly researchers, for sharing your access.

Many Africans pay $1 per hour at the Internet cafe. I am heartened that they participate at Minciu Sodas, my online laboratory for independent thinkers. We respond. They do very well. Within a year or two, with the help of one person or another, they may get a computer, a video camera, paid work, emergency assistance, and even fly to a conference in Africa or Europe.

Last spring, I made a list of our participants' endeavors. What might we "work for free" on as I looked for "work for pay"? Thank you to Sasha Mrkailo, our virtual assistant in Serbia, for helping me. Of the one hundred endeavors, about one-third had to do with making the best of the Internet access we have. Joy Tang of One Village Foundation gave us our first such endeavor in 2003, a wonderfully bold vision of Africa and Silicon Valley responding to the AIDS catastrophe with unity centers for village rebirth. That year I took to heart George Soros's Open Society Insitute's call for proposals to create software for NGOs. Thanks to Ian Bruk of Canada, I dedicated three months to propose a social networking kit for activists with marginal Internet access. I went to the island of Vis, Croatia, for a related summer camp, where I was kicked off the island for being too intimidating. My proposal was one of the first to be rejected.

Last August, as I walked the post-Soviet streets of Vilnius, Lithuania, I wondered, what could I do differently so that I had a chance of making money and repaying my debts? There are a billion people who can walk to the Internet. It's a good idea to optimize software so they could spend fewer hours at Internet cafes and more hours at offline computers. But the idea was too abstract to explain to funders. They couldn't wrap their minds around it. For that reason alone, I thought to propose a device, a Flash Drive Editor, for reading and writing the contents on one's USB flash drive. As I checked out of the supermarket and saw the Wincor-Nixdorf cash register's 5" black and white customer display, I thought, Wow! that's all we need.

Might the Flash Drive Editor advance all of our endeavors? I thought aloud about each one. Why achieve this or that? Each purpose leads to another. I drew a diagram of all our purposes. Ultimately, they all have us "reach out to the hard to reach", which I suppose is God's purpose. That's why I named our device the Includer.

Our African participants greatly encouraged me that we were on the right track. Yet the confirmation came from Ricardo, a UK engineer who I found through his Sneakernet page at the OLPC wiki. He's a real hero of our Includer. He has written hundreds of creatively technical pages at our wiki. He's helped dozens of Africans get computers and get online. By this time, Samwel was leading a center with 15 computers and training 3,000 women in ICT and entrepreneurship. Ricardo and Samwel are making leaps and bounds in bringing Internet to the region. Ricardo is a pseudonym and I have never met him, but he is real enough for me.

Samwel just returned from one month in Italy, his first trip to Europe, thanks to Maria Agnese Giraudo, Kennedy Owino and the Nafsi Afrika Acrobats. I don't know now if our paths diverge. I want to organize the kingdom of heaven, a culture for independent thinkers, where we work openly to create the world we want. I want a world where people think deeply on their own, but share their work-in-progress at every opportunity. I think alone. I have a lab for that! I want others to think alone, I want to listen to them, I want to think along. Do we have enough for a culture? Do we have enough for the Includer?

Will you be our hero? Will you think along? Live with us, the poor in spirit. Reach out with us! Are you hard to reach? Are you with me? Or against me?