In this section, you shall find information on our projects. Firstly, we look at our current projects and here we profile two of them i.e. Youth SPEARHEAD project and The Nangoma Children and Youth Empowerment Centre Project. Then at the bottom of this page, there is information on our older or past projects.

CURRENT PROJECTS

1. Youth SPEARHEAD

The Youth SPEARHEAD project is a project by which young people in Zambia shall use ICTs to generate, research, repackage and disseminate information on HIV/AIDS, Environmental Education and Human Rights for Development to other young people around the country who not have access to such information and whose lives can change for the better upon making use of the power of that information. The project shall be a vehicle by which various instruments and documents, that help govern the nation and hence are of individual importance to each young person in Zambia, shall be translated or watered down from technical and political jargon and repackaged for the consumption of young people. Further, the project shall rouse collaboration among young people in Zambia as they discuss matters that affect them and can be addressed by them using local and foreign resources. It will provide the youth with tools, like guidelines, manuals and toolkits, in soft copies, which shall teach and steer the young people as they go about carrying out social action projects that improve their lives and the state of the societies following the old adage that ‘Be the Change You Want to See in the World’.  

Specifically, the project shall produce a number of deliverables including:

☺         National Online Resource and Information Clearinghouse and Library for Zambian Youth – This will actually be a portal that shall specifically serve Zambia youth and shall have local content or foreign content that has been sieved for local relevance to give Zambian youths a one-stop shopping centre on the internet for resources. The Clearinghouse and Library shall act as both a source of news and a database on Resources, Opportunities, Employment, Training, Education, Sustainable Livelihood, Events and Conferences for Youth, Research Findings and Reports, Digital Formats of Various Topical Guidebooks, Manuals and Toolkits, Discussion Forums and List serves, Art and Photo Galleries, Databases of Individuals, Organisations, Projects in Zambia and abroad. The portal, as a means of communication for Zambian young people and a source of vital and relevant info, shall feature news, people, events and online discussion as well as providing a resource bank of and for youth organizations. It will also include project profiles, including descriptions, photos, news, supporters, etc. The portal shall be a conduit by which young people shall access resources to enable them to take local action on local problems and through which they shall be recognised. It will consolidate efforts by the media, youth groups, government and private sector so as to maximise on available resources. The project also seeks to find ways to make existing youth leaders more effective and to rapidly involve more youth in such activities. If we take up the challenge of networking and engaging these young innovators, they will continue to act as development champions and focal points within their communities – leading to a more equitable, connected, and inclusive Zambia. Over the years the portal shall have an archive and database that will benefit latter youth in Zambia. It will also be addressing a number of problems. For example, Zambian youth have no platform to advertise their products, activities, opportunities, resources etc to other young people as the mainstream media is expensive to advertise through. Being an email-and-internet-savvy generation, the young people will have a conduit through which to communicate and exchange resources among themselves cheaply because they only need to spend little time to locate the resources which are already researched for them and arranged and presented to them. They will not need a lot of time to search the Internet and then sieve through the results for the best catch. Further, little is known about Zambian youth, indigenous Zambian Knowledge and the brilliant work of Zambian youth by people outside the country. Hence, wrong or out-dated information and statistics about them are often used as no fresh info comes in from Zambian sources (e.g. by the UN). Zambian youth, for lack of information, miss out of opportunities and resources that would otherwise be available to them. The problem is the lack of a reliable conduit of info from Zambian youth to the outside world and vice versa. The clearinghouse and Library addresses this problem among others;

☺          Digital Offline CD-ROM Libraries – These shall be topical CDs which shall be made by Zambian youth locally for fellow Zambian youth using local facilities and local content as much as possible. This will involve production of 3 sets of 1000 CD-ROMs: one set for HIV/AIDS, one for Environmental Education and the last one for Human Rights. The HIV/AIDS CD-ROM shall be produced by a subproject called Youth FAD (Youth Fighting AIDS Digitally), the Environmental CD-ROM by a sub-project called Youth DEEDS Project (Youth Delivering Environmental Education Digitally and Sustainably) and finally, the Human Rights CD-ROM shall be produced by a sub-project called Youth 4D HRE Project (Digitally-Driven Development and Delivery of Human Rights Education Youth Project).  Youth FADS is a sub-project to nurture, promote and organise young people in Zambia on matters of using Information and Communications Technologies (ICTs) to fight one of mankind’s biggest challenges of the moment - AIDS. This sub-project seeks to save the youth from dying out from the dreaded, deadly disease but it also seeks to utilise the energy, ingenuity and ubiquity of young people in the country to fight the disease. And since young people love ICTs and music, their attention shall be caught by this project. Like its name, the project is taking advantage of youth fads. Youth DEEDS and Youth 4D HRE are similar only the content is different from HIV and their delivery in the group also differs. The concept behind these CD-ROMs or Digital Libraries is that currently most information on AIDS, Environment and Human Rights is given out in printed form. However, paper and books are fragile, cumbersome and expensive. We need ICT tools to deliver this information. The Clearinghouse and Online Library is one such way of delivery. However, in Zambia, the Internet does not reach the whole of Zambia. For those not using or not accessing the Internet the solution is CD ROMs. A 25g CD ROM can contain 3 000 or more books and other media, an equivalent of 160 000 pages, 360 kg and US $ 20 000 in terms of hard copy books. An average four year University degree involves the integration of 16 000 pages. This implies a CD ROM potentially contains information worth 16 university degrees. A CD ROM can be used all over Zambia as long as electricity exists and a computer can be rigged up;

☺        Document Research and Repackaging – This process involves the project researching, downloading, digitalising, writing up and collecting various documents of value to young people. If these are already presented in a youth friendly way, they shall be transmitted to young people but otherwise, these documents  and instruments shall be translated or watered down from technical and political jargon and repackaged for the consumption of young people. For example, the supposedly beneficiaries of the Convention for the Rights of the Child are children themselves who have not yet attain minimal education to fully understand the document yet because it is riddled with technical and legal jargon, it is presented in a boring way (black and white typed manuscript with no illustrations) and it is too long for comfort (54 chapters which go up to more than 100 pages). The project would love to water down such documents of value to young people into language which they understand and also in a format that will ensure that documents are not too long (chapters are condensed into small summary that are long enough to capture the essence or gist of the document but short enough to maintain the readers’ interest and save time). For example in a child-friendly language, “Rights" are things every child should have or be able to do. Further we could condense the chapters of the Convention in a child-friendly way. For instance i.e. Article 6 can be condensed into one sentence without losing track of what it is communicating i.e. You have the right to be alive and similarly Article 7 can read as You have the right to a name, and this should be officially recognized by the government. You have the right to a nationality (to belong to a country).

☺        Development of an Adaptable and Practical Set of Classroom Materials – These include lesson plans which shall be in the format the teachers find most appropriate for their locality or school but having the thrust that the project shall generate after the training of teachers has been carried out as detailed below. Other materials may include websites,  web-based publications, tapes, videos, artworks, poetry, printed matter and any other products generated by participants for education activities covering HIV/AIDS, Environment and Human Rights;

☺       Development of Youth Networks or Strengthening Existing Ones – This shall be achieved by providing the impetus needed for setting up, revitalising and strengthening youth networks around the country on the three topics or HIV/AIDS, Environment and Human Rights. There is a strong network on HIV/AIDS already in Zambia but none exist for Human Rights or Environment. The project realises that there is a lack of organized in-country communication in Zambia among youth ventures. Youth effort on social change in Zambia is fragmented, often uninformed by others practice, unconnected to a bigger global picture, unable to leverage local and foreign resources, and find moral and inspirational support. The project by informing and giving a platform for communication and exchange basically seeks to address this problem. We shall develop list serves and forums for discussion and also give the youth toolkits of effective organisation design, management and sustenance of networks so that we have an inclusive, vibrant, relevant, up-to-date and well coordinated in-country communication among youths in Zambia. The project will reach all 9 provinces of Zambia. Finally, this networking shall make cultural exchanges possible, both physical and virtual, between young people and their associates in the different parts of Zambia, hence helping them understand Zambia as a national even better, thus empowering them to work well in their projects and programmes;

☺         Promote Sustainability and Continuity in Youth Advocacy and Practical Work – This shall be achieved by realising that there is lack of continuity in youth work and helping bridge that discontinuity. Youth, by definition, is a transitory demographic.  As young people gain experience and move into adulthood, they often take their valuable experiences with them, leaving others to relearn the lessons of the past. This project aims at documenting youth initiatives, projects, ideas and other activities that have to do with mental prowess and institutional memory of individuals so that when older young people abandon youth work in preference for corporate jobs or further education or if and when they unfortunately die, there is a record of their intellectual works which can be used to improve our society. This will reduce the need for all youth leaders to ‘re-invent the wheel’ whenever the take the reins of leadership from others who move one. Nonetheless, Intellectual property rights shall be taken into account;

☺         Increase Young people’s Participation in Decision-making processes – Whereas youth are rarely involved in decision-making, the project will strive to inform youths on the few existing possibilities of youth involvement in governance. Lack of youth involvement means that youth lack the framework, support and legitimacy required for sustained action, and policy implementation lacks buy-in from this key grassroots constituency. To solve this, we shall be the vanguard of government probing and advocacy on matters of youth involvement and participation in decision-making processes. By training youth and giving them tools they can use for their participation, the project shall ensure that there is development of local capacity for youth work in HIV/AIDS prevention and care, Environmental education and Human Rights Awareness through the School or Community Action Plan or Projects, promotion of Peer Education and Counselling and synergies and linkages with local Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) and Philanthropy organisation;

☺            Greater Youth Awareness – The young people shall be aware of matters involving HIV/AIDS, Adolescent Reproductive Health matters, Environmental Education, National and Global Activities like the WSIS, UN MDGs, Earth Charter, WSSD, CSD Process, the National Constitution Review process, National ICT Policy Drafting and Enactment, National Youth Policy Review, General Politics and economic issues and other related issues so that they can make informed choices and participate in governance effectively hence winning support, credulity and trust from other players;

☺         Setting Up of a National Youth Library – This shall be a library which shall be used by youth and NGOs to research on matters relating to young people in Zambia and abroad. This library shall be more of a resource centre for research by students and researchers at the Tertiary Learning Institutions of Zambia and for those based in NGOs. The library shall supplement the services of the Online and Offline databases and libraries. It will source it’s books from organisations that give free books e.g. the World Bank, PSI, PANOS etc; the Internet e.g. the World Youth Report 2003, the Youth and MDGs Paper, etc which can be downloaded, printed and bound for shelving; book purchases from book shops and from other possible sources e.g. our collaborators in the SEEDS project who bring books to Zambia.

☺         Production of Reports in form of Documentaries, Books and Digital Text – At the end of the project, reports shall be made and these are meant to ensure there is posterity and continuity so that any group of youth around the world who would like to carry out a similar project can easily use the report and adapt them to their context.

 It is planned that the project shall initially be for one year (starting as soon as the funds can be wired to us) but will continue beyond the one year which the funding shall cover. It is hoped that funds for the second year and the years coming shall be sourced from both within and outside the project. The project shall produce a web-based clearinghouse from a production centre that shall be created specifically for this job and it shall produce 1000 copies of each topical CD-ROM before distributing these CD-ROMs to young people around the nation. The process leading to the production of these CD-ROMs shall involve collaboration with many stakeholders within Zambia and outside and shall involve training of young people around the country and consultancy for the content so that the young people shall own the content and not a situation where we at the project’s centre prescribe the content.

 So far, the project has raised about half of the money needed towards its budget of US $ 45 000. The funds being that are being requested shall cover project planning, implementation and evaluation i.e. content generation, bills, equipment, transport, capacity-building and training, administrative costs, staff costs, etc.

For other details contact us by phone or email. 

2. Nangoma Children and Youth Empowerment Centre

The project shall be located in Nangoma, in Mumbwa district, about 108kilometres west of Lusaka city on the Lusaka – Mongu Road. Nangoma has a population of close to 70 000 people and the main activity in the area is agriculture.

In the first year of the project, the project intends to establish the Nangoma Children and Youth Empowerment Centre which shall help fight HIV/AIDS in the area of Nangoma especially among the children as well as help those children affected by the disease to improve their lives and later lead better lives. The project already has found buildings and other needed resources and now seeks funds to be able to run this project.  

The centre shall have a multiple-purpose:

1.       To provide much-needed education and recreation/entertainment for young people so as to reduce the incidences of HIV/AIDS among children and youth and the incidences of teen pregnancies through behavioural change;

2.       To provide orphaned, infected and disadvantaged children with new and innovative socialisation agents that can bring into their lives missing hope, confidence, realisation of dreams and sight of opportunities as needed psychosocial empowerment; and

3.       To give children and youth in the area the needed opportunities to learn life-skills like leadership, utilisation of talents and income-generation to ensure they lead better lives in future than they would otherwise.

We plan to run it as a recreation place where young people can come to learn, get informed, relax and have fun. At the centre, we shall run a library, sports clubs, carry out workshops, have entertainment and carry out outreach to the community. We shall have soccer teams of disadvantaged boys in the categories Under-15 and Under-21 and a female’s soccer team and a netball team. We will also build a recreational half court for basketball, as it is an unknown sport here. To cater for the handicapped, we shall also have 1 pool table and 1 mini-soccer table. In addition we shall have darts, table tennis and other indoor games like draughts, chess, snakes and ladders etc.

Once in a while, we shall have film shows by projector as both entertainment to the children registered with the centre and as an income-generating venture for the centre. The population in the community lacks general entertainment and mostly people go to drink beer as entertainment and film shows would be a good option.   

Most of the children and youth in this area go to school but from the onset of the project, we shall sponsor those children not going to school due to abject poverty so that they too can go to school. 

Lastly, we intend to train some caregivers from the nearby villages on childcare and HIV/AIDS and income generation so that they can sustain their families even with the added number of members due to these orphans. 

The centre shall be run like a cooperative or club. The children and youth shall make all decisions on programming and indeed what they need after being guided by management of the centre. Rescue Mission Zambia through its Nangoma chapter shall be the administrator for the project and shall handle finances through a bank account that shall be opened specifically for the project for accountability’s sake. 

The centre shall create employment for children and youth of Nangoma as we shall employ some people to run the centre from among the young people in Nangoma who have had the needed education and are very familiar with the area of focus i.e. Nangoma. Skills-training shall be carried with the help of a wood-workshop near the site of the empowerment and a Kitchen/Nutrition School as close to the site of the Empowerment Centre.

Future Plans 

It is planned that the centre shall acquire a minibus in 2006 which shall be used for all transport needs of the centre and indeed for income generation as the route between Lusaka and Nangoma is serviceable while the bus is on errands or not. We plan to apply for Duty and VAT exemption so that we can apply for a donation from Transport Aid International or another donor and then have it cheaply into the country. 

In 2006, we also plan to have five computers when we open a computer room at the centre. They will be used for teaching basic computer skills to increase computer knowledge for the children and youth served. They shall also be used for entertainment through computer games. We shall source them from Computer Aid International. 

The future plans for this project include opening a community radio station in 2007. It will help farmers with rudiments of farming and modern trends as well as marketing of their products and access inputs. On the other hand, it shall look into the entertainment of the people and so it shall also have entertainment programmes. It will have programmes on HIV/AIDS and other health matters like water safety and nutrition.  

The centre plans to introduce an adult literacy class on a limited basis in 2006. We also plan to have workshops for adults on agriculture and marketing, and nutrition and health and possibly set up agriculture extension service on goat and pig raring. We shall only go into this upon seeing we have support from government and other potential partners.

PAST PROJECTS

The projects below were carried out by Rescue Mission Zambia in the last few years.

1. Youth Creating Digital Opportunities (YCDO):
This project involves tapping the talents, energies and resource of youths in the field of Information and Communication Technologies. Through a list serve and a website, we are bringing together youth from all over the world to discuss issues of ICT and Knowledge and we are bringing to the attention of youth, opportunities and events relevant to them. One such important event is the World Summit on Information Society coming up late this year around which we are creating activities for the youth.

Under this project, Rescue Mission Zambia provides one of the project’s coordinators on the world scale. One of the steering committee members represents TakingITGlobal, another represents the International Institute for Sustainable Development and yet another one represents the Global Knowledge Partnership. I am not sure how many people we are reaching through this but they are in their millions considering its world-wide. This is the first year of the project and so far we have raised more than US $ 100 000 for the project work and we are now raising funds for action projects in many parts of the world. This project was started by a number of individuals including some from Rescue Mission Zambia in 2001 after the G8’s Digital Opportunities Taskforce (DOT Force) venture.

Details of the project can be found at www.ycdo.net .

2. AIDS WEB Project:
This is a project under the auspices of the International Education and Resource Network (iEARN), World Links for Development (WorLD) and Schools Online where schools in seven African countries and the USA came together to work on online collaboration towards addressing the issues of HIV/AIDS. Under this project, Rescue Mission Zambia, acting as iEARN Zambia, was the implementing agency of the project in Zambia. Rescue Mission Zambia, which coordinates all iEARN school activities in Zambia, chose the participating school in Zambia and did the fundraising to ensure the participating school in Zambia had the needed equipment and connectivity.

The project involved training of teachers on how to use ICTs in communicating and fighting AIDS. It also involved a lot of cultural exchange as teachers and children communicated through email and the web to exchange peculiarities in their areas around the AIDS problem. Two group meetings occurred in Cape Town South Africa and Washington D.C. which brought together teachers from the seven African countries and the USA involved in the project. This is supposed to be an evolving project and right now we are redesigning the project to see how it will fit into the future.

Approximately this project reaches about 150 000 people in eight countries. This project was launched in 2001 by iEARN and the World Bank Links for Development programme .

The details of the project can found at .........

3. UNESCO/UNITWIN Culture of Peace Series of Events:
In 2000, UNESCO, through its National Commission in the Netherlands, launched a series of international events on the Role and Responsibilities of Southern African and Western Universities and Students in Achieving a Culture of Peace. This was done under the theme “Students and Universities: Capacity for Peace and Democracy”.

The year 2000 was acclaimed the “International Year for the Culture of Peace” by the United Nations General Assembly. To this end, UNESCO and the UNITWIN student network, initiated a series of events that would look at Universities and Students as potential vehicles of the needed culture of peace.

The concrete aims of the series of the events were:
1. To bring together students who share a common interest in the promotion of a Culture of Peace and Democracy.
2. To analyze the concept of a Culture of Peace and the enabling conditions for achieving such a culture.
3. To define practical ways students and universities in Southern Africa and Europe can contribute to a Culture of Peace and Democracy in their own societies.

At a number of universities in Southern Africa and Western Europe, local workshops of students were organized early in 2000 and these workshops discusses practical meanings of concepts like culture of peace and democracy in the daily lives of the students, at their universities and in their societies. These local workshops culminated into an international student conference in Utrecht, Netherlands were the different country delegations made presentations via different media: video, drama, audio, poetry, papers and posters. Discussions were held and plan of actions drafted.

The local workshops and the discussions at the main conference were held under the sub-themes:
1. Stimulating support
2. Changing the curricula
3. Cooperation and Networking
4. A Responsible Academic Community
5. Access to Information

UNITWIN has no Zambian branch and so Rescue Mission Zambia volunteered to set up the series of events in Zambia. We raised the funds needed to bring together the whole process and we selected and invited participants from the University of Zambia and a wide stratum of the Zambian society.

We also prepared the Zambian delegation and prepared the Zambian presentations for the Utrecht conference. Rescue Mission Zambia did this voluntary, though it cost us a lot of money.

The whole series of events was documented in a book and the details can be found at www.phys.uu.nl/~unitwin  and email: unitwin@phys.uu.nl .


4. SEEDS Project:
In 2000, the SEEDS project was founded, having conceived the idea and having met favorable support from Canada and Sweden. Students Exchanging Environmental and Development Solutions (SEEDS) is a project that brings together students from Zambia and partner countries in order to gain access to the ideas and energy of one other. For 2 weeks, these students, along with four University professors, work together to tackle some of the most pressing environmental and development issues facing Zambia. Guided by an on-site coordinator from each country, these students work together to examine, research and discuss questions of environmental and developmental importance. This project aims at allowing students from different countries to engage themselves within their field of study, while establishing lasting links with countries offering diverse cultures and environmental experiences. This exchange is just a beginning, for its structure looks to the future – at setting a precedent for future SEEDS projects, around the world, and around the year. SEEDS departs from traditional schooling to allow participants to work towards solutions, rather than to merely study them. SEEDS is not just a project to study a problem. It is a project to provide answers. The projects reaches at least 5 000 people a year. Its annual budget is in excess of US $10 000.

5. The National Indicators Project (NIP):
This is a project, which measures indicators of development in Zambia and the implementation of Agenda 21. It was started by young people has since been adopted by the Environmental Council of Zambia who aim to use it to map indicators in for the World Summit for Sustainable Development process and other needs. This is being done by the council’s data office. This project is ongoing and it has the full blessing of our national government. This project was started in 1998 and reaches more than 4 million Zambian directly or indirectly.

6. Environmental and Developmental Topic Outreach to Schools:
This is a five-year project, which was first muted in 1999 but was only started and implemented in 2002. In this project we go to schools to teach them issues of Agenda 21, development in general and other related issues. This project benefits from the help of the University of Zambia (UNZA) and the Environmental Council of Zambia. Sometimes, we invite experts from the Environmental Council of Zambia (ECZ) and other similar bodies to give talks on pertinent environmental issues. After having been to schools and have enlightened the pupils on Agenda 21, the schools then form some project teams or Rescue Mission clubs which carry our the measurement of indicators, analysis of the situation (then realization of what is amiss) and implementation of corrective projects.

We are currently in the first year of the project and we have been to about 12 schools and we hope to expand this to 100 which is our target number. We are seeking funding for the expansion as we have been operating on members' contribution. We have mapped out our strategy and we hope to start from the Southern-most city in Zambia to the northernmost town alongside the main railway of Zambia, which cuts across the country. We plan to set up Rescue Mission groups in 10 schools per town/city and visit 10 – 20 towns.

7. Communications and Information Centre:
Information flow in Zambia is poor. The media is not far reaching and access to information is taken as a privilege and not a right. Youth groups and schools, which can do a lot to improve the social situation, cannot run well without information and communication. Rescue Mission Zambia realizes this and has decided to do something about it.

Firstly, we decided that we needed to see what was the best method of communication and information provision. We decided on an Internet Cafe of a special kind. This will be a place where youth groups and schools that have been accredited with the centre will be allowed access to the internet at a subsidized cost or at no cost at all. This will ensure that they can communicate with other groups abroad by e-mail, get information about other groups from websites and can sell information about themselves to other groups through their own sites. It shall also act as a resource centre, clearing house and an incubator where ideas shall tuned into plans and plans into action.

Rescue Mission Zambia is the official I*EARN contact in Zambia. I*EARN is the International Education and Resource Network (www.iearn.org) which connects schools around the world and youth groups around the world to do projects online or do them locally and then share experiences on the Internet. We hope to connect many school and youth groups from Zambia to others abroad through iEARN and other networks. This project was started in 1998 and it has seen us set up spit-off projects though we are still sourcing for funds to set up this centre.

8. Park Development:
Two years ago, there was no functional park in Lusaka, a city of some 3 million people. This led to enterprising people coming fee paying parks. In Zambia, where 86% of the population lives on less than US $1 per day and 96.3% live on less than US $2 per day, this situation is undesirable as it denies children from poor families access to these parks for leisure. In addition, we all know that lack of leisure and social amenities lead to vices like drug abuse. We decided to adopt and work on the Goma lakes, a lakeside park at the University of Zambia, which is accessed free. Under the SEEDS project, we bought six asbestos benches and placed them under trees for people sit in the shade when relaxing. Though some have since been stolen we are still going ahead with the project and phase two involves erecting bins for people to place trash so the park is not littered and it also involves planting trees and flowers to beautify the place. This project potentially benefits 50 000 people who use the benches and bins occasionally. The project was started in 2000 and was fully implemented during the SEEDS project in 2001 and 2002.

9. Malaria Prevention and Control:
Malaria is the number one killer disease in Africa and mosquitoes spread it. Under the theme, mosquitoes kill, kill mosquitoes, we came up with a one off project. Rescue Mission Zambia members living around the University of Zambia Great East Road Campus carried out this project. Their efforts were mainly to "undo" breeding places for mosquitoes through physical work like slashing long grass and draining away stagnant pools of water. The events occurred throughout Earth Day in 1999 and after the physical work, participants got together by the Goma lakes to have a time of fun.

10. iEARN ZAMBIA

iEARN activities have been in existence in Zambia for the last four to five years. Schools have been participating in a handful of iEARN projects deliberately or accidentally. It took a meeting of youths to realize that it would be very benefitual for all participants in iEARN projects in Zambia to come together under an umbrella body; iEARN Zambia. Rescue Mission Zambia spearheaded the youth meeting and was chosen to be the iEARN contact in Zambia but iEARN Zambia would comprise all interested youth groups and schools.

Rescue Mission Zambia wrote to the iEARN General Assembly through iEARN US headquartres in New York and in 2000 iEARN Zambia was officially recognized by the General Assembly and started it’s operations from Rescue Mission Zambia offices. The first challenges were to bring the message of iEARN to schools, NGOs, Private Sector and Government; help connect schools to the Internet so they can participate in the iEARN online projects; set up a central centre from which schools affiliated to iEARN can participate in projects and lastly to source resources for iEARN Zambia headquarters to operate effectively.

RMZ is very conscious of the Digital Divide and is active in initiatives to address this problem. Apart from being the Zambian chapter of the International Education and Resource Network (iEARN) and a member of the Global Knowledge Partnership (GKP), RMZ is active in many ICT and Educational. Initiatives and works with many partners around the world

11. NATIONAL ICT POLICY FORMULATION

In 2003, Rescue Mission Zambia represented all youth NGOs in Zambia in the national ICT Policy formulation process and presented a paper to the policy drafting team during the National ICT Policy Symposium held at Intercontinental Hotel in Lusaka entitled: Youth and the ICT Age - Challenges, Opportunities and for Participating in the Information Society