incommunicado

In an attempt to open up mainstream higher education in India to madrassa students, the Aligarh Muslim University (AMU) has decided to accredit several Islamic seminaries across the country.

Microsoft founder Bill Gates has said he would help Indonesian students obtain free software and inexpensive personal computers to gain greater access to the Internet.

Tara Suri in CosmoGIRL as "The Giver"

Tara Suri has recently launched TurnYouWorldAround.org and Aandolan.org (which means a movement for change in Hindi) is an organization that "implements social-change initiatives and provides youth with the tools to become changemakers." I don't want to spoil the surprise waiting for you if you explore the site for a few minutes.

TurnYouWorldAround - Aandolan's recent project is Connect a Kid, where youth can create projects to fund-raise for OLPC's Give Many program through their school, community, or just friends and family: [Connect a Kid] is an initiative of Aandolan, an organization started by teens that provides youth with the tools to become change-makers. Having partnered with OLPC, [Connect a Kid] works to raise funds to purchase laptops, and also aims to raise awareness about the need for global education. Youth register --- and then work with friends and family to help kids around the world!
Tara Suri on CNN's YPWRThe website and information packet you get post-registration provide fundraising event ideas, action plan outlines, and other useful tools to create, promote, and evaluate project(s). The groundbreaking part of this is that it's a youth-to-youth program, empowering both the recipient of the XO laptop as well as the giver to realize their ability to organize and enact change.

CNN's YPWR (Young People Who Rock) has a blog post up about Tara, and now an interview at cnn.com/video

Disclosure: I work at Youth Service America, where Tara Suri is a member of the National Youth Council, a collection of amazing young people who make the likes of most of us tired with just seeing the amount of good they get done on a daily basis. She's a co-founder of HOPE (Helping Orphans Pursue Education) (when she was 13). She was also named Cosmo Girl of the year for 2007.

GiveMany Tara Suri ConnectaKid TurnYouWorldAround Youth2Youth

HAVANA, Feb 14 (IPS) - More than a year after the outbreak of the so-called "e-mail war", the debate on cultural policy has not died down in Cuba. And although the issue is not addressed in the national media, the discussion continues, and is spreading to embrace other aspects of life in this socialist island nation.

BUENOS AIRES, Feb 12 (IPS) - In keeping with its aim to shore up the strong role played by the state, which was badly weakened during the years when free-market economic policies were predominant, the Argentine government is implementing a successful programme of electronic learning for its employees that is already being requested by a dozen Latin American countries interested in replicating the experience.

BUENOS AIRES, Dec 3 (IPS) - "I’d like to be offered the role of a madwoman some day, or of a vicious person, just out of curiosity, because I’m really not like that at all," says Carmen Drive, a 56-year-old Argentine homemaker who has already acted in 18 movies without ever having set foot outside her home town, population 30,000.

VENICE, Nov 29 (IPS) - With clashing civilisations, as with clashing people, there&#39s one strategy that works: talk your way out of it. Just how is, of course, the more difficult question.

QUITO, Nov 21 (IPS) - The possible cancellation of the mobile telephone operating licence granted by Ecuador to Porta Celular, a company indirectly owned by Mexican multi-millionaire Carlos Slim, could set a precedent in Latin America.

RIO DE JANEIRO, Nov 15 (IPS) - The crackdown in eastern Europe and the United States on websites posting racist content or child pornography could expose Latin America to the risk of becoming a new "cyber paradise" for on-line paedophilia and racism, experts say.

RIO DE JANEIRO, Nov 12 (IPS) - The Internet Governance Forum (IGF) being held in Rio de Janeiro Monday through Thursday, with more than 1,500 people attending, is discussing issues that are not yet a concern for the majority of users, but are already having a major impact on their lives.

BUENOS AIRES, Nov 12 (IPS) - A young Argentine couple will set out from this capital city in December on an overland journey through 12 Latin American countries, as far as Mexico, taking their country’s films to small towns in rural areas, with backing from the state and civil society organisations.

MAHAVILACHCHIYA, Oct 26 (IPS) - In a north-central village, deep inside Sri Lanka’s backwoods, a young man is glued to a computer screen, pushing a mouse and filling in figures.

HELSINKI, Oct 16 (IPS) - It is dubbed the "the world&#39s largest ever factual multi-media event" by its producers, and it will be watched by a potential of 300 million viewers around the world.

RIO DE JANEIRO, Oct 1 (IPS) - The declaration the Dell computer maker is requiring its Brazilian customers to sign, promising their computers will not be exported to the "axis of evil" or used for weapons development, according to reports, highlights the difficulties faced by scientific research due to U.S. geopolitical considerations.

HAVANA, Sep 21 (IPS) - Although Cuba proclaimed its intention to change its computer operating systems for free software in 2005, the shift seems to depend more on the efforts of a small community of enthusiasts than on the state agencies that are officially in charge.

BRUSSELS, Sep 21 (IPS) - Microsoft will still wield enormous power in the global computer industry despite this week&#39s ruling by a European court that the Seattle-based corporation has abused its monopoly.

ATHENS, Sep 7 (IPS) - The small black device that Panagiotis Vovos holds in his hands can measure the voltage produced by mobile phone network transmission antennas. It can detect voltages up to 7(Volt/metre).

GUATEMALA CITY, Aug 17 (IPS) - With international support, experts in Guatemala are salvaging and digitising millions of National Police records discovered two years ago in a munitions depot. Thanks to their painstaking work, light could be shed on the tens of thousands of murders and forced disappearances committed during the country’s bloody 36-year civil war.