Barnekulturuken and Kidlink

Arendal, Norway, February 2001

Arendal Internasjonale Barnekulturuke (The Arendal International Children's Cultural Week) helped stage Norlink, the 1990 online event that lead to the birth of Kidlink. Cooperation between our organization was close during the first years: 1990, 1991 : announcement, videoconference, Washington Post, 1992 .
Barnekulturuken works for the good of children, to promote creativity and multi-cultural contents in a community profiled as an anti-racist zone.
In a meeting on February 5, Kidlink proposed several models for cooperation between the two organizations: A major educational conference for teachers in 2002; a workshop for kids interested in learning about computers in 2001, and a multi-cultural project provisionally called The Bridge. These proposals are outlined below.

About Kidlink

Kidlink is a global, non-profit organization headquartered in Norway focused on empowering youth through free educational programs. To help them get friends, and build inter-personal networks with peers around the world. Since 1990, we have rendered free services to youth through the Internet.
By January 2001, Kidlink had 86 public conferences for youth and adults (mostly teachers and parents) in 19 language areas, a private chat network, and a multi-lingual web site of more than 100,000 pages. Languages were Catalan, Chinese, Danish, German, English, French, Hebrew, Icelandic, Italian, Japanese, Macedonian, Norwegian, Portuguese, Romanian, Saami, Slovenian, Spanish, Swedish, Turkish. Our services were administered by some 500 volunteers living in 42 countries. Most of them classroom teachers.
Competing with 600 educational projects from all over the world, Kidlink was awarded the 1st prize in the prestigious Global Junior Challenge competition's "Educational projects for users up to 18 years old" category. 18 months ago, the King of Sweden handed Kidlink 1st prize in the "IT in all kinds of education" category of the Global Bangemann Challenge. - The US Dept of Education has links to Kidlink in its "Teacher's Guide to International Collaboration on the Internet."
Youth in over 140 countries have been served. Some join our youth communities to develop personal networks with peers in other countries. Others join through schools to participate in a range of educational programs.
Empowerment and development of youth are achieved through educational programs, like the free, eight-month Who-Am-I? program. This program also motivates literacy training, supports schools' curriculum, and contributes to help preserve and disseminate traditional knowledge.
We also organize computer training activities for underprivileged young people in order to improve their access to information. We invite NGOs (Non Governmental Organizations) to become partners, use the Kidlink infrastructure as an element in their work, and the Who-Am-I? program as a vehicle.
Some examples from our current calendar:

• Works with the Saami Educational Council of Norway to make the Kidlink resource available in their language. Who-Am-I? is translated into the "Nord-samisk" language (16,000 people in all countries speak this language).
• Works with Universidad San Ignacio de Loyola in Lima in Peru to build a Quechua language activity within Kidlink. Over 3.8 million indians in Peru speak this language. Also, it is widely spoken in the Andes mountains of other countries.
• Works with Secretary of Education, the City of Recife, Brazil to make the program available for members of the Fulni-ô tribe using the Yathé language. Only 5,000 people speak this language.

Many of these initiatives include setting up community centers (Internet Cafés) in key villages to serve many schools. We call these community centers Kidlink Houses, and have 28 throughout Brazil, and one for street kids in Mexico City.
There are similar initiatives aiming at including more language and culture areas into Kidlink, and integrating them with the Who-Am-I? program.
Kidlink wishes to help strengthen these languages in an effort to help their youth build a positive self-assessment. So that they will be able to meet peers in other language and cultural areas on an equal level.
Training of teachers is instrumental. Kidlink not only works with them, but make them work together with us and become active elements of our approach. Thus, we provide real learning by using a strategy that works perfectly with teachers of every background. (In all language areas, most teachers are women.)
We have a free Kidlink train-the-trainers program available through our web. We are looking for ways to have this Who-Am-I? program element translated into other languages.
A successor to Who-Am-I? with potential far-reaching potentiality has recently been developed. The multi-lingual I have a dream educational program, due to start later this year, focuses on helping youth realize dreams about their future and a better world. During eight months, they will plan, design, and implement an Internet based project to realize a dream in collaboration with peers.
The outcome will be increased ability to start local businesses, and an early start on knowledge networking for participating youth. The program will provide experiences in marketing, negotiations, decision making, fundraising, international cooperation, organization, use of productivity software, evaluation.

Proposal

Barnekulturuken and Kidlink share a genuine concern for our planet, and the coming generations. It therefore seems appropriate to propose a wide model of cooperation between our two organizations. We suggest that the following elements be considered:

Bottom line

Kidlink is about children, youth, and heart. Warmth. Empowerment. Working with Barnekulturuken would allow us to extend these resources to yet more of the coming generation. Together, we can make a difference!

Yours sincerely,

Odd de Presno
Kidlink Executive Director
Mail: opresno@kidlink.org