[OLPC-Philippines] Notes from OLE Nepal

[Mel Chua]

We've discussed learning from other deployments and asking them about 
the models they've employed - so here are notes from a conversation with 
OLE Nepal's Rabi Karmacharya over falafel the other day. Rabi, hopefully 
I haven't mangled things too badly. ;) Comments and suggestions welcome. 
(Words in parentheses are mine.)

I'd like to publish these in a better forum than the archives of a 
mailing list. Any suggestions? (Rabi, is any of this useful for the OLE 
Learning Guide?)

--Mel

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The most important thing is a good team. We have strong players here: 
people who have been in the classroom, people who understand how to 
build and run organizations, people with the ability to create and 
support technologies with open-source development processes, people who 
can quietly move around and keep us together as a community that listens 
and learns from each other. And all of us are dedicated towards 
improving education in the Philippines. So we already have the biggest 
thing settled.

We do need to have a legal entity to give us existence in the eyes of 
the Filipino government, donors, and the like. (Having an organization 
should not be a way to exclude contributors or apportion power - it is 
so we have these structures to serve the the contributor community at 
the heart of what we do, the people on the ground who Get Things Done. 
And that community of volunteers needs to be as open and inclusive as 
possible.)

As a legal entity, we are required to have a board of directors. Rabi 
suggested that we have a board of directors, a management team, and an 
advisory board.

The board of directors is a legal requirement. These people are:

* Givers of advice
* Filipino
* Legally liable for the organization
* Do not draw salary
* Not involved in day-to-day operations
* Deliberately chosen to span a wide range of professions - law, 
banking, medicine, government, education, engineering, anything else we 
might imagine needing advice on.
* Respected people who give the organization credibility and help 
promote the project, as they have access to people we will typically not 
have access to.

The management team is the team involved in daily operations. These are 
professionals in their field working for the organization in their 
professional capacity. They are the core execution body and the ultimate 
decision-makers (when the community cannot reach consensus). The 
management team reports to the Board of Directors.

The advisory board is similar to the Board of Directors, except:

* They have no legal liability
* They do not make decisions

...and thus have less of a time commitment than members of the Board of 
Directors. A distribution across professions is less important; this 
board should have pepole who have been in the education field, former 
government officials, etc. They can also be international figures, 
unlike members of the Board of Directors who must be Filipino. Their 
role is to provide the management team with advice, so they are 
resources for the management team to draw upon but the management team 
does not report to them.

There are several things we should be considering at this point (as we 
continue to move our projects forward):

* (How do we decide upon - appoint, elect, or invite - the management 
team and the two boards?)
* How do we keep a low-key PR presence to allow us to focus on our work, 
yet document well and publicly enough that the right people get credit 
for the right work, and what we do is visible to others who would like 
to learn to do the same?
* What is our exit strategy - what goal(s) are we aiming to hit at what 
time(s)?